Nikita Mazepin didn’t have a lot rust to shake off in his cross-country rally return over the weekend, ending second general and profitable his class on the Denis Davydov Baja.
Piloting a Can-Am Maverick X3 for 99 Racing, Mazepin set the quickest occasions by means of the primary stage on Saturday as he led Andrey Boksha by 1:17. Nevertheless, his grip on the general lead slipped the subsequent day when Timur Shigabutdinov beat him by nineteen seconds. A thirteenth on the third part dropped him to second outright behind winner Alexey Kuznetsov, although he managed to salvage a win on the fourth and remaining leg with 1:25 over Andrey Novikov.
His runner-up received him the N2 class for side-by-side automobiles (equal to the FIA’s Challenger/T3 and SSV/T4 divisions). Shigabutdinov and Novikov joined him on the category podium; Novikov had scored a 3rd in T3 at Russia’s premier Silk Approach Rally in July.
“Rally is a good way for me to remain in form and check my off-road driving abilities,” stated Mazepin earlier than the race.
The Denis Davydov Baja was Mazepin’s first rally raid of 2024 and fourth as a complete. He broke into the self-discipline in 2022 by competing on the Ladoga Trophy and Silk Approach, profitable the latter in T3 regardless of being new to it. Scheduling obligations prevented him from racing the 2023 Silk Approach, and his solely race that 12 months was a second on the Baja Astrakhan. Mazepin has expressed curiosity in racing the Dakar Rally sometime as a longtime fan of the game.
Switching to rallies got here shortly after his exit from Formulation One within the wake of Russia invading Ukraine in 2022, when Haas F1 Group terminated his contract whereas Canada and the European Union imposed sanctions on him and father Dmitry for the latter’s ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The European Court docket of Justice dropped the youthful Mazepin’s EU sanctions in March, and he examined a GT3 automotive at Balaton Park Circuit in Hungary three months later.
He had already returned to worldwide motorsport in February 2023 within the Asian Le Mans Sequence for 99 Racing, a Jordanian outfit supported by TF Sport, and ending fourth within the LMP2 standings. 99 received two of the primary three races within the 2023/24 ALMS season and positioned second within the different, however Mazepin missed the ultimate two rounds in Abu Dhabi on account of sickness and the group settled for third in factors. On account of FIA guidelines, Mazepin races overseas beneath a impartial flag slightly than Russia’s (he had already carried out so throughout his one-year F1 stint because of the Russian doping scandal).
Held in Ulyanovsk, the Denis Davydov Baja was the third spherical of the Russian Rally-Raid Cup, a sister sequence to the bigger Russian Rally-Raid Championship. Aleksandr Semenov, the T1 class winner on the Silk Approach Rally, completed fifth general and second in R for vehicles behind Kuznetsov.
