Race driver Rokas Baciuska became the first Lithuanian to win the FIA world championship last year and today he highlighted his name in his country's automobile sport history even more. On Monday, FIA announced officially that Rokas Baciuska defended the world rally-raid champion title in the T4 category.
Unlike last year, Rokas Baciuska did not need to wait for the fifth and last world championships stage, happening on the 12-18 of October in Morocco. On the 1st of September the fourth stage of the world championship ended in Argentina and although Rokas Baciuska and his co-driver Oriol Vidal did not participate in it, the Lithuanian after this stage secured his world champion title.
Rokas Baciuska risked missing the stage in Argentina, because after three stages he already had a solid advantage from other drivers. After stages in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Mexico, Lithuanian already had 189 points.
The fourth world championship stage in Argentina called “Desafio Ruta 40” was won by Japanese driver Shinsuke Umeda. He gained 50 points and that made him second in the general table. But his total score is 60 points smaller than Rokas Baciuskas 129 points. Because in Morocco, the maximum number of points you can get is 55. The Lithuanian racer is already officially named world champion.
Happy Rokas Baciuska said, ‘It is a good feeling to be a world champion. Of course, the first time is the first time, it can not be compared to anything, but the second year in a row showed that it was not random luck and that I can defend the title. It is weird that everything falled into place like that and I became the world champion without participating in the last stages”.
World rally-raid championship this year, as always, started with the prestigious Dakar rally race. There racers fought for points for two weeks. Rokas Baciuska in Saudi Arabia won two stages, finished second in four stages and due to disappointing technical issues with the buggy in the last kilometres of the rally, finished second overall. That gained him 79 points for the world championship.
In “Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge” and “Sonora Rally” Lithuanian surpassed all his competitors and in both stages finished with a maximum of 55 points. Noteworthy is that Rokas Baciuska in UAE and in Mexico won all five stages and after three world championship stages he has won 13 stages overall. No drivers in other world champion categories has this kind of spectacular statistic.
Rokas Baciuska remembered, ‘To race in the Dakar rally is always the hardest, because it is the biggest rally with 15 days of racing. It was not easy in Abu Dhabi as well, because we had to drive in 38 celsius heat, there was no air to breathe. Mexico waited with exotic experiences and hard speed sections, but overall it was the easiest win compared to others’.
Because Rokas already defended the world champion title, the Lithuanian driver is planning to try his strengths in Morocco rally with T3 class buggy.
