My career as a co-driver began in 2007 in various rallies across Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. I participated with cars like the VW Golf, Audi Coupe Quattro, Opel Astra, and BMW Compact, reading pacenotes for different drivers and competing in 6 to 10 events per year. In 2013, our crew became the champions of the Lithuanian Rally Sprint Championship. After the end of the 2015 season, I took an almost three-year break — until one phone call fundamentally changed my co-driving career. My first start with Martynas Samsonas in his BMW E36 M3 at the 2018 “Rally Classic Druskininkai” marked the beginning of a long and still ongoing journey.

When driving with a racer of such caliber, it was necessary to perform my duties flawlessly, both in the preparation for the rallies and in the direct co-driver work of reading the pacenotes. Right at the beginning of the first full season with Martynas Samsonas, we took part in Finland, Latvia, Northern Ireland, the United States of America and Spain rallies. This allowed me to gain invaluable experience very quickly in very different environments, as each country has a different rally culture and documentation. All this happened while we were driving different and very fast rally cars such as the BMW E36 M3, Subaru Impreza WRX STi, BMW M3X E46, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX and Ford Fiesta N5+.

After working together as a crew for several years, we won competitions in Lithuania and Portugal, and after the Samsonas Motorsport team improved the Ford Fiesta N5+, we fought to the last kilometers for the title of Lithuanian Rally Champion in the 2021 season, which we all finally succeeded in the 2023 season with the Škoda Fabia N5+ car.

he 2024 season marked yet another new chapter in my co-driving career. I began dedicating more time and energy to working with drivers aiming to improve their pacenote writing skills, as well as supporting fellow co-drivers by sharing my experience and working methods. I continued competing alongside Martynas Samsonas, but also partnered with Mantas Barktkuvėnas in the Lithuanian Rally Championship, co-driving in a Ford Fiesta Rally4. Additionally, I participated in the Lithuanian Mini Rally Championship with Ovidijus Vaštakas, the winner of the “Aš Ralistas” project. In this project, I served not only as his co-driver but also as a crew mentor. Together with Ovidijus, we won the overall classification of the 2024 Lithuanian Automobile Rally Championship. It was an incredibly active season, during which I competed in 17 rallies across Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia — bringing my total to nearly 100 rally starts overall.

Preparing for a rally is one of the essential details of my job (from the co-driver’s point of view), because I think that good preparation and analysis of the upcoming rally greatly facilitates and improves the work during all competitions, both for me and for the team. I start with the competition documents, applications, etc., look at the general aspects of the rally and pay particular attention to whether there are any innovations or other interesting things that may not appear in every rally. Then I try to develop a strategy, e.g. for the tires, the fuel, the special features of the special stages and interesting locations. This kind of life before the rally, the preparation for it, somehow gives me the energy and motivation for the competition itself. I couldn’t single out anything in particular, because both the documentary and the strategic things that are needed in the competition are important.