Serhii Malyk plans to make his return to the Dakar Classic in 2025, marking his second start in the race after débuting in 2022. He will drive a 1998 Renault Kerax D-50 truck under the team name Spirit of Ukraine.
Malyk is a land speed record holder with over forty world and national records to his name. In 2013, he became the first person to ride a motorbike along the entire border of Ukraine, piloting a KTM 950 over thirteen days. Many of his exploits came in his Formula 1600 car such as summiting Crimea’s Gora Ay Petri mountain in 2004, setting the country’s speed record for a formula car of 112 km/h on Sonyachne Lake in 2014, and even outrunning an L-29 Delfín plane in 2006.
Many of his world records were set at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah with vehicles from Ukraine. Malyk went 116.86 km/h on a KMZ Dneper motorcycle in 2017, which he followed up a year later with a 167.36-km/h run with a Dneper Electric bike. The latter was eventually used for a cross-country expedition in 2020 from the easternmost part of Ukraine in Rannia Zoria to Solomonovo on the opposite extreme nearly 1,700 kilometres away, then returned to Bonneville in 2021 to set the A Omega category’s world record of 172.55 km/h.
For 2019, the Kyiv Automoto Club (KMAMK) developed the Spirit of Ukraine, an electric bike that produces 300 kW of power on ninety-kilogram lithium/ion batteries, though inclement weather scrapped any potential runs. Spirit of Ukraine achieved a top speed of 201 km/h during a speed record test at Hostomel Airport in 2020.
In 2022, Malyk entered the Dakar Classic with the Renault Kerax. With fellow Ukrainians Lyubomyr Shumakov and Serhii Martovenko as navigator and mechanic, respectively, the team finished seventy-seventh overall and eleventh in the H1T class. Although the 2022 Classic was Malyk’s first Dakar, he had entered the 2008 Dakar Rally in a KrAZ-5233 VE assistance truck before it was cancelled; had the race taken place, he would have been among the first Ukrainians to participate in the Dakar alongside bike rider Vadim Pritulyak. Malyk and Pritulyak are good friends: the former has donated to buy stretchers for the SKARLAT 1000 side-by-side vehicle, which is used by Ukrainian troops for medevacking the wounded and for which Pritulyak is an ambassador, and bought merchandise to support his SKARLAT-XTRM Team that competed at the 2023 Rallye TT Cuenca with disabled war veterans.
A Kyiv resident, Malyk helped create the Kyiv Automoto Club in 1996 to organise various rallies and races in the region. The club also prepares his cars for international rallies such as the 2023 and 2024 Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique; driving a 1975 Autobianchi A112 at the latest edition in February, he placed 177th overall and fiftieth in Group III.
The 2025 Dakar Classic runs in conjunction with the Dakar Rally on 3–17 January.
