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Nikita Mazepin returns to cross-country rally at Denis Davydov Baja

Nikita Mazepin returns to cross-country rally at Denis Davydov Baja


Nikita Mazepin did not have much rust to shake off in his cross-country rally return over the weekend, finishing second overall and winning his class at the Denis Davydov Baja.

Piloting a Can-Am Maverick X3 for 99 Racing, Mazepin set the fastest times through the first stage on Saturday as he led Andrey Boksha by 1:17. However, his grip on the overall lead slipped the next day when Timur Shigabutdinov beat him by nineteen seconds. A thirteenth on the third section dropped him to second outright behind winner Alexey Kuznetsov, though he managed to salvage a win on the fourth and final leg with 1:25 over Andrey Novikov.

His runner-up won him the N2 category for side-by-side vehicles (equivalent to the FIA’s Challenger/T3 and SSV/T4 divisions). Shigabutdinov and Novikov joined him on the class podium; Novikov had scored a third in T3 at Russia’s premier Silk Way Rally in July.

“Rally is a great way for me to stay in shape and test my off-road driving skills,” said Mazepin before the race.

The Denis Davydov Baja was Mazepin’s first rally raid of 2024 and fourth as a whole. He broke into the discipline in 2022 by competing at the Ladoga Trophy and Silk Way, winning the latter in T3 despite being new to it. Scheduling obligations prevented him from racing the 2023 Silk Way, and his only race that year was a second at the Baja Astrakhan. Mazepin has expressed interest in racing the Dakar Rally someday as a longtime fan of the sport.

Switching to rallies came shortly after his exit from Formula One in the wake of Russia invading Ukraine in 2022, when Haas F1 Team terminated his contract while 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 of Justice dropped the younger Mazepin’s EU sanctions in March, and he tested a GT3 car at Balaton Park Circuit in Hungary three months later.

He had already returned to international motorsport in February 2023 in the Asian Le Mans Series for 99 Racing, a Jordanian outfit supported by TF Sport, and finishing fourth in the LMP2 standings. 99 won two of the first three races in the 2023/24 ALMS season and placed second in the other, but Mazepin missed the final two rounds in Abu Dhabi due to illness and the team settled for third in points. Due to FIA rules, Mazepin races abroad under a neutral flag rather than Russia’s (he had already done so during his one-year F1 stint due to the Russian doping scandal).

Held in Ulyanovsk, the Denis Davydov Baja was the third round of the Russian Rally-Raid Cup, a sister series to the larger Russian Rally-Raid Championship. Aleksandr Semenov, the T1 class winner at the Silk Way Rally, finished fifth overall and second in R for cars behind Kuznetsov.

Race results

Finish Number Driver Co-Driver Team Vehicle Class Time Margin
1 211 Alexey Kuznetsov Sergey Pereverzev AMD Motorsport G-Force PROTO R 3:09:24 Leader
2 201 Nikita Mazepin Ivan Bezdenezhnykh 99 Racing Can-Am Maverick X3 N2 3:11:34 + 2:10
3 204 Timur Shigabutdinov Igor Okhotnikov TAIF Motorsport Can-Am Maverick X3 N2 3:16:13 + 6:49
4 202 Andrey Novikov Alexey Goryunov G-FORCE Motorsport G-Force T-3GF N2 3:16:34 + 7:10
5 212 Aleksandr Semenov Dmitry Okhotnikov GAZ Raid Sport GAZelle NEXT R 3:17:42 + 8:18
6 208 Andrey Boksha Alexander Koryavichev ATVARMOR Racing Team Polaris RZR Pro R N2 3:18:18 + 8:54
7 215 Bogdan Vavrenyuk Artem Terentyev Bogdan Vavrenyuk GAZ-67 R 3:24:22 + 14:58
8 207 Evgeny Fresorger Timofey Gavrilov Siberia SDE Can-Am Maverick R N2 3:27:22 + 17:58
9 218 Vladimir Tyupenkin Ekaterina Kovaleva AMD Motorsport Lada Niva R 3:31:18 + 21:54
10 205 Dinar Sibgatullin Stanislav Kudinov Dinar Sibgatullin Can-Am Maverick X3 N2 3:40:17 + 30:53
11 214 Mikhail Rastorguev Denis Kalinin Mikhail Rastorguev Nissan Pathfinder R 3:42:56 + 33:32
12 220 Vadim Novikov Dmitry Rybin 000 UAZ UAZ Patriot N 3:46:24 + 337:00
13 209 Rustam Gliyev Viktor Shitikov TM Team Can-Am Maverick X3 N2 3:52:06 + 42:42
14 222 Alexander Ponomarenko Nikita Severyukhin ONE-UP Motorsport UAZ 31519 N 4:16:01 + 1:06:37
15 223 Mansur Yenikeev Maxim Plyukhin Mansur Yenikeev Lada Niva N 5:37:19 + 2:27:55
DNF 206 Azat Minnikhanov Ilnaz Gizzatullin HANSPORT Can-Am Maverick X3 N2 DNF N/A
DNF 210 Sergey Babkin Oleg Uperenko Sergey Babkin Can-Am Maverick X3 N2 DNF N/A
DNF 216 Denis Nazarkin Andrey Nikiforov Denis Nazarkin Toyota Land Cruiser 80 R DNF N/A
DNF 217 Sergey Sobolev Denis Anisimov ONE-UP Motorsport Sbornaya R DNF N/A



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