Baja Russia Northern Forest will open the new season in FIA World Cup or Cross Country bajas at the first week of February. At the upcoming race, girls will act as a driver or co-driver in six crews from four countries of the world, and two crews will be completely female.
The crew with the starting number 204, in which the experienced Marina Danilova will act as a co-driver, will fight for the highest places in the overall standings of the Baja Russia Northern Forest. Danilova is a multiple Russian rally champion; she won titles in the crew with Sergey Uspensky and will go to the start of the upcoming race with him.
For twenty years Marina Danilova has been performing in the classic rally as a co-driver. Having started her career in a crew with Dmitry Naryshkin, seven years later she won the Russian Rally Cup together with Alexey Tserlyukevich. And in the same 2007, she first sat in the right seat of Sergey Uspensky’s rally car.
In 2012, the duet of Sergey Uspensky and Marina Danilova got the first joint title of Russian rally champions, and in 2017 and 2018 they repeated their success. She is well know as orginizer of Rally Novorossiysk (WRC candidate race), Rally Peno and other events.
The most famous in the media sphere Russian female crew of the Baja Russia Northern Forest will consist of two motorcycle racers Anastasia Nifontova and Ekaterina Zhadanova.
A list of all the regalia of Anastasia Nifontova, born in the USA and living in Moscow, can make up a separate page of the text. Therefore, we list only the most important of them. In 1999, she became the first motorcycle racer in Russia who dared to challenge male racers in cross-country rallies – it happened during a race called the Baja Seliger.
A year later, she took part in two rounds of the Russian Cross-Country Championship – the 2000 Baja Transaero and the Baja Seliger for the second time in a row. However, there came a break in cross-country rallies for Nifontova, and she switched to motocross, where she competed from 2005 to 2008 inclusive.
But in 2009 she started at the cross-country rallies again – Nifontova took the fourth place in the race called “Khazar Steppes”. And since then, almost every year in the starting lists of certain cross-country competitions, you can see the name of Anastasia Nifontova.
Rounds of the World Cross-Country Rally Championship – Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, Rally Oilibya du Maroc, Qatar Sealine Cross-country rally, Atacama Rally Chile and Pharaons Rally Egypt, multi-day rally marathons Africa Eco Race, Silk Way and Dakar – motorcycle racer and Red Bull athlete Anastasia Nifontova obeyed the greatest races of the planet.
In recent years, Nifontova has switched from a two-wheeled vehicles to a four-wheeled ones, changing a racing motorcycle first to a Toyota Land Cruiser 200, and then to a buggy. At the Baja Russia Northern Forest she will be driving a Can-Am Maverick X3 buggy. Another motorcycle racer Ekaterina Zhadanova, a prize-winner of various cross-country competitions, will act as the crew’s co-driver.
Another Russian racer Tatyana Sycheva will start the first round of the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Bajas together with a co-driver Alexander Alekseev. Tatyana has performed in the Can-Am X Race series, as well as in the Russian Cross-Country Championship. In 2019, she made her debut at the Baja Russia Northern Forest, as well as at the Silk Way Rally.
In addition to the three Russian crews, in which the girls will perform, the upcoming baja entry list also includes three fully or partially female crews from other countries. Moreover, all three duets will be debutants of the Baja Russia Northern Forest.
Patrycja Brochocka made her debut in cross-country rallies in 2018 at the Dacia Duster Elf Cup project – its participants compete in the same Dacia Duster off-road vehicles, only slightly different from the production cars of this brand. The next season she continued to compete in this brand championship, and last year she switched to a fully functional off-road vehicle of the T2 category – Toyota Land Cruiser 200. The Polish racer will drive this vehicle at the upcoming Baja Russia Northern Forest. During her short career, Patrycja Brochocka has already managed to visit the podiums of various races in her standings. Maciej Marton, the Polish racer’s countryman will be her co-driver.
Magdalena Zajac and co-driver Michal Ogorek are another Polish crew, they also come from the Dacia Duster Elf Cup project cross-country monocup, one of whose leaders is the legendary Krzysztof Holowczyc, who won the Baja Russia Northern Forest in 2010. And now his pupils set off on their own to conquer the winter Russian special stages.
And, finally, the duet of two girls from Germany and the Netherlands – Lina van de Mars and Lisette Bakker – is going to become the brightest crew of the upcoming snow and ice baja. During her life, the German racer was a drummer in a rock band, worked as a road tour assistant for the girl band Destiny’s Child, then suddenly trained as a car mechanic and got a job in the Alfa Team Engstler circuit racing team. But her adventures did not end there…
In 2004, Lina got to television and since then has been working as a host of various programs dedicated to cars, motorsport and tuning. In 2008, Lina van de Mars acquired a racing license and from that moment a new hobby appeared in her life. In cross-country rallies, she made her debut at the Rally Aicha des Gazelles (Morocco) in a Mercedes prototype. In addition, Lina van de Mars spent an entire season in the ADAC Opel Rallye Cup, a monocup that is held as a part of the German Rally Championship.
Six crews, eight beautiful girls and each of them is worthy of special attention – we urge everyone to follow their performance at the Baja Russia Northern Forest and, of course, to cheer up for them!
