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.

“Congratulations to Nikita Mazepin on his well-deserved first place and Timur Shigabutdinov on his second place,” reads a statement from SNAG Racing, who has prepared his Maverick since his rally début. “It’s very nice to see our cars take the lead positions and show excellent results in competition. It inspires and motivates us to keep moving forward!”

Switching to rallies came shortly after his exit from Formula One in the wake of Russia invading Ukraine, 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