Serhii Malyk plans to make his return to the Dakar Basic in 2025, marking his second begin within the race after débuting in 2022. He’ll drive a 1998 Renault Kerax D-50 truck below the crew identify Spirit of Ukraine.
Malyk is a land velocity report holder with over forty world and nationwide information to his identify. In 2013, he grew to become the primary particular person to trip a bike alongside the whole border of Ukraine, piloting a KTM 950 over 13 days. Lots of his exploits got here in his Formulation 1600 automotive equivalent to summiting Crimea’s Gora Ay Petri mountain in 2004, setting the nation’s velocity report for a method automotive of 112 km/h on Sonyachne Lake in 2014, and even outrunning an L-29 Delfín aircraft in 2006.
Lots of his world information have been set on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah with automobiles from Ukraine. Malyk went 116.86 km/h on a KMZ Dneper bike in 2017, which he adopted up a yr later with a 167.36-km/h run with a Dneper Electrical bike. The latter was ultimately used for a cross-country expedition in 2020 from the easternmost a part of Ukraine in Rannia Zoria to Solomonovo on the other excessive almost 1,700 kilometres away, then returned to Bonneville in 2021 to set the A Omega class’s world report of 172.55 km/h.
For 2019, the Kyiv Automoto Membership (KMAMK) developed the Spirit of Ukraine, an electrical bike that produces 300 kW of energy on ninety-kilogram lithium/ion batteries, although inclement climate scrapped any potential runs. Spirit of Ukraine achieved a prime velocity of 201 km/h throughout a velocity report take a look at at Hostomel Airport in 2020.
In 2022, Malyk entered the Dakar Basic with the Renault Kerax. With fellow Ukrainians Lyubomyr Shumakov and Serhii Martovenko as navigator and mechanic, respectively, the crew completed seventy-seventh total and eleventh within the H1T class. Though the 2022 Basic was Malyk’s first Dakar, he had entered the 2008 Dakar Rally in a KrAZ-5233 VE help truck earlier than it was cancelled; had the race taken place, he would have been among the many first Ukrainians to take part within the Dakar alongside bike rider Vadim Pritulyak. Malyk and Pritulyak are good mates: the previous has donated to purchase stretchers for the SKARLAT 1000 side-by-side automobile, which is utilized by Ukrainian troops for medevacking the wounded and for which Pritulyak is an envoy, and purchased merchandise to assist his SKARLAT-XTRM Group that competed on the 2023 Rallye TT Cuenca with disabled struggle veterans.
A Kyiv resident, Malyk helped create the Kyiv Automoto Membership in 1996 to organise numerous rallies and races within the area. The membership additionally prepares his automobiles for worldwide rallies such because the 2023 and 2024 Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique; driving a 1975 Autobianchi A112 on the newest version in February, he positioned 177th total and fiftieth in Group III.
The 2025 Dakar Basic runs along with the Dakar Rally on 3–17 January.
