With his F1 career over, Nikita Mazepin is itching to head back to rally raid. In July, he intends to return to the Silk Way Rally for the first time since winning the T3 class in his debut in 2022. After that, he’s interested in tackling the Dakar Rally.

“I’ve been following the Dakar this year. To be honest, I’m planning to race it,” Mazepin told Autosport.com.ru. “The main questions that need to be answered are in which class, with which team, and with what budget. I have no interest in racing on my own budget. I don’t want to do it for free either, because there are opportunities to do it differently. For me, this is a professional activity.

“From a sporting interest perspective, anybody who finishes the Dakar in the top ten or top 15 in their class is someone with great fortitude and willpower, so I really want to be among them.”

A longtime cross-country rally fan, Mazepin entered the discipline for the first time in 2022 after losing his F1 ride in the wake of his country invading Ukraine. Later that year, he entered the Silk Way Rally for Sergei Kariakin’s SNAG Racing; although just his second rally and his debut in one of the world’s largest rally raids, he won the T3 category overall. He sat out the 2023 race due to scheduling conflicts, but did a one-off at the Baja Astrakhan and finished second.

His only rally of 2024 was a class win in the Denis Davydov Baja, part of the Russian Rally-Raid Cup.

While his rally endeavors have exclusively been in Russia, Mazepin has been competing internationally again since 2023 in sports cars like the Asian Le Mans Series and Middle East Trophy; incidentally, one of his MET teammates is 2024 Silk Way T3 winner Roman Rusinov. Mazepin and Rusinov race under a neutral flag due to FIA policies.

For the 2025 Silk Way in July, he will race a Can-Am Maverick X3 prepared by 99 Racing. The team, Jordan-British in license, is co-run by Mazepin and also fielded his car at the Denis Davydov Baja.

While the FIA’s restrictions, which forbid Russians from doing races under the federation’s watch unless they pledged to condemn the invasion and race with a neutral or another nationality, remain in place for 2025, Mazepin agreeing to the terms to race sports cars already places him on the right track to competing at Dakar. In December, Kariakin said he talked with the FIA about getting the rule lifted; in the meantime, he’s entertained workarounds that would allow him to race the Dakar like transporting his team’s cars through the UAE so he doesn’t have to go through Europe.

On the other hand, Mazepin would not need to go through that many hoops since he isn’t an owner/driver. The EU also dropped its sanctions on Mazepin last spring, which had been imposed shortly after the invasion because of his father’s ties to Vladimir Putin.

Should he seriously pursue a Dakar entry, he wants to do so in the Ultimate class rather than in T3 (Challenger) like he’s used to. He spoke highly of the newly crowned Dakar winner Yazeed Al-Rajhi, finding it inspirational that he is a privateer rather than a factory driver.

“T1 is a very interesting class. In my opinion, this is like off-road Formula One,” Mazepin commented. “We saw this year a beautiful story of a Saudi businessman who won the overall in this class, without being a professional athlete. That’s a story that could be repeated.

“There are also quite a lot of such opportunities in trucks. I am good friends with the general director of Ural, Pavel Yakovlev. I recently visited them in the winter, talked with the race team. I also know KAMAZ-master very well and got an invitation from them, but here’s the thing: driving a truck is bad for the back. My back is quite weak, and I’m afraid my career might end 15 years early if I start racing trucks.”

Featured image credit: SNAG Racing