Serhii Malyk plans to make his return to the Dakar Traditional 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 staff identify Spirit of Ukraine.
Malyk is a land velocity document holder with over forty world and nationwide information to his identify. In 2013, he turned the primary particular person to trip a motorcycle alongside your complete border of Ukraine, piloting a KTM 950 over 13 days. Lots of his exploits got here in his System 1600 automotive comparable to summiting Crimea’s Gora Ay Petri mountain in 2004, setting the nation’s velocity document for a method automotive of 112 km/h on Sonyachne Lake in 2014, and even outrunning an L-29 Delfín airplane in 2006.
Lots of his world information had been set on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah with automobiles from Ukraine. Malyk went 116.86 km/h on a KMZ Dneper motorbike in 2017, which he adopted up a yr later with a 167.36-km/h run with a Dneper Electrical bike. The latter was finally used for a cross-country expedition in 2020 from the easternmost a part of Ukraine in Rannia Zoria to Solomonovo on the other excessive practically 1,700 kilometres away, then returned to Bonneville in 2021 to set the A Omega class’s world document 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 document take a look at at Hostomel Airport in 2020.
In 2022, Malyk entered the Dakar Traditional with the Renault Kerax. With fellow Ukrainians Lyubomyr Shumakov and Serhii Martovenko as navigator and mechanic, respectively, the staff completed seventy-seventh general and eleventh within the H1T class. Though the 2022 Traditional 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 acquired merchandise to help his SKARLAT-XTRM Workforce that competed on the 2023 Rallye TT Cuenca with disabled battle 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 vehicles 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 general and fiftieth in Group III.
The 2025 Dakar Traditional runs at the side of the Dakar Rally on 3–17 January.
