The Baltic states may not come to thoughts when folks consider a rally raid hotbed, however curiosity has grown over time. Andrei Rudnitski feels the identical, even going so far as to counsel a championship spanning Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Over the weekend, Rudnitski competed within the MudEST RallyRaid because the co-driver for Darius Žitlinskas. The 2 completed eleventh of twelve vehicles within the UTV class after their Can-Am Maverick X3 slammed right into a tree stump through the first Selective Part.
Organised since 2018, the MudEST RallyRaid is the one main cross-country rally in Estonia. For 2024, the race befell within the Alutaguse Tervisespordikeskus outdoors Vasavere, going by means of forests and an previous shale quarry. Urvo Männama, an Estonian who ran the Dakar Rally in January, received the general.
“The race turned out to be very fascinating from all views, and I actually loved it,” Rudnitski informed Cross-Nation Rally Information. Though he’s Belarusian, Rudnitski commonly runs Central and Jap European rallies in addition to the Dakar, working alongside these like Lithuanian Benediktas Vanagas and Pole Jakub Przygoński. “I want to see a Baltic nations championship sooner or later, together with this race, in addition to rounds in Lithuania and Latvia, and it will be nice so as to add one spherical in Poland. I feel such a championship would have good potential.”
Forty-six of the sixty-one MudEST RallyRaid opponents have been Estonian, whereas 9 got here from Lithuania and 4 from Latvia. Poland and Finland every had one apiece.
Not like Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia should not have outstanding home rally championships. Consequently, their residents usually compete in these of neighbouring nations just like the Czech Republic and Poland, regionally within the FIA Central European Zone (CEZ) Cross-Nation Rally Championship, or internationally within the Baja Cups and World Rally-Raid Championship. Newbie rallies within the area like RBI Sport’s Rallye Breslau in Poland and the Balkan Offroad Rallye in Romania are additionally common locations for Baltic racers.
Latvia has hosted varied rallies and Bajas as properly. Those that went on to compete on the Dakar Rally together with Andris Dambis and Jānis Vinters within the 2000s, the latter ending seventh in bikes on the 2007 race, and Didzis Zariņš in 2022. OSC, a Latvian producer, turned the primary electrical car to finish the Dakar with Māris Saukāns and Dambis in 2012.
North of Latvia, Männama is amongst a small group of Estonians who’ve raced at Dakar, with Joel Tammeka being the primary when he completed third within the 1991 version’s Truck class months earlier than his nation’s independence from the Soviet Union. Toomas Triisa received the 2017 Dakar within the Malle Moto class earlier than he and Männama turned the primary of their countrymen to compete at Dakar in an FIA class in 2023.
In comparison with their Baltic brothers, Lithuania enjoys one of the crucial common rally raid scenes in Europe. Ten groups on the 2024 Dakar hailed from the nation like reigning W2RC SSV and Quad champions Rokas Baciuška and Laisvydas Kancius, the previous additionally at present main the W2RC’s Challenger standings.
“We’re a rustic whose most important sport is basketball. We aren’t superb at soccer, superb at basketball, however in January for the Dakar, it turns into the #1 sport,” Gintas Petrus mentioned in 2023. Considered one of Lithuania’s rally pioneers, he made his Dakar début in 2002. “Everyone watches it and sends me recommendation on methods to drive. Everyone seems to be a Dakar specialist.”
As a lot as 98 p.c of the Lithuanian inhabitants is aware of the Dakar Rally whereas roughly seventy p.c considers themselves a fan of it. Vanagas, who competes within the top-level Final class, attributed this to the self-discipline’s attention-grabbing nature and elevated media publicity within the nation.
“It’s like actually a faith and I don’t know one other nation on the earth the place Dakar is so common,” commented Vanagas through the 2024 race. “There have been rather more Lithuanians who have been doing Dakar earlier than me, however I feel that we’ve began to inform the story. It was twelve years in the past after we first began Dakar, so we have been telling the story and we have been doing various errors within the very starting.
“Individuals in all occasions have been , particularly if one thing dangerous occurs so perhaps this helped somewhat bit, however from one other perspective, I feel Dakar is sort of a diamond. Diamond is a stone which has loads of angles, so one of many stone’s edge or angle is motorsport, rally, vehicles. One other angle is gorgeous nature, it’s excessive personalities, it’s robust women and men, it’s even people who find themselves dying right here, sadly. Should you begin to inform the story from completely different perspective, I feel folks get and so they discover why they like Dakar. We invested into media group and now we have almost the identical quantity of media crew as technicians. Once you inform the story and also you your self are fascinating for folks, then they begin to comply with.
“One other good factor in January, not less than within the Baltics, it’s fairly chilly and nothing actually occurs. So everyone seems to be sitting and watching TV.”
