Brp

After a brilliant career in karting that resulted in a national title, in 2017 Rokas Baciuska switched to rallycross, winning the European Rallycross Super 1600 championship. In 2019 the young Lithuanian moved up to the premier RX Supercars class, with a best result of 4th place at the French round, narrowly missing out on the podium due to a mechanical problem. 2020 should have been the year where everything fell into place but uncompetitive machinery prompted him to throw in the towel and switch to rally-raid, a hugely popular sport back home in Lithuania. On his debut at the Andalucía Rally, he just missed out on a podium finish due to a penalty for changing his tyre in the wrong place. Then last January, having just turned 22, Rokas finished his first Dakar directly on the T4 podium, behind the Monster Energy Can-Am driver Austin Jones. An impressive debut that suggested there was plenty of potential for improvement! And improve he did, finishing second on the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge behind Marek Goczal. Rokas started the Rallye du Maroc with a new co-driver, Oriol Vidal, a former quad rider who switched to SSVs on the 2017 Dakar and has four Dakars under his belt. Together, they won the T4 category, even placing 11th in all the FIA categories combined! A first world championship victory that he backed up with a second place on the Andalucia Rally to win the inaugural FIA Rally-Raid T4 Championship on this first full year of racing in the discipline.

"It was tough to win the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge with all those big dunes, but we pulled it off. We brought the buggy back in one piece and the team did a great job. Now we're leading the championship and we'll see what Mexico has in store for us. We've never been there before. I hope to have some fun there."