Vanina Ickx
Encyclopedia : V : VA : VAN : Vanina Ickx
Vanina, daughter of Belgium's arguably most successful racing driver Jacky Ickx, was born on February 16, 1975, in Brussels.
She starts racing at a relatively late age, entering the BMW Compact Cup in 1996, which runs as a sub-division to the national touring car championship, Belgian Procar, partnering the Cup's most successful entrant, Stéphane De Groodt. For 1997 she gets a Cup racer of her own, before she moves up to the major class in 1998, which runs to Super Production regulations. She shares a BMW 320i with another girl racer, Sylvie Delcour, but the partnership isn't to last long as she soon gets herself a transfer to the more competitive Renault team.
She scores her first podium that year, partnered by French ace Franck Lagorce, but on the downside, when sharing a car with her father Jacky, she crashes out of the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, admittedly by her own fault. She remaines a part of the Renault team in 1999, but it is harder to make herself stand out against total Peugeot domination.
So for 2000 she is to join the latter team, resulting in a career-high third place overall in that year's 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps. That same year she would also score her first victory, in the Ferrari Challenge.
2000 is also the first year when Vanina does not have a full-time program, so she ends up profiling herself as a bit of an all-rounder. Already having participated in two Rally Raid events the year before, she is to enter the gruelling Dakar for the first time, co-driving for her father, Jacky. Since then she has entered the raid two more times, the last time being in 2002.
For 2001 she tries her hand at single-seater racing for the first time, participating in the US-based Formula 2000. The rest of the year she fills with guest appearances in races all round Europe: the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Belgian Toyota Yaris Cup, the Porsche Supercup and the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps.
With the exception of the Formula 2000 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Vanina's 2002 racing schedule is pretty similar to the one she had in 2001.
Her studies asking more of her time as she nears graduation, 2003 proves to be a rather quiet year with participations on the Le Mans and Spa-Francorchamps classics, another Ferrari Challenge event and, last but not least, a guest-outing in the Formula V6 Renault Eurocup at the Portugueuse Estoril track.
For 2004 she has once again a full-time program, this time in the Belgian GT championship Belcar, while not easing up on the usual guest outings in international events. The Belcar campaign proves successful as the year ends with Vanina taking home the Ladies Trophy. She scores another victory (only her second) in the Ferrari Challenge, while occupying the last step on the podium at the end of her one-off participations in the Oman Desert Rally Raid and the Monza round of the short-lived Formula X championship. She notches up a class-victory in the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps and makes her (seemingly obligatory) guest appearance in the Porsche Supercup at the Belgian Grand Prix.
2005 sees Vanina continue in the Belcar championship, racing the same spiced-up Mini Cooper she did the year before, and she nets her first class victory in the Tourisme division. At the same time, having made her European Le Mans Series (ELMS) the year before in the baby GT-class, she enters the main division impressively by finishing third three times in a row, driving the Rollcentre Dallara LMP sportscar. Another class victory comes her way at the Chinese round of the FIA GT championship, racing a Belgian-made Gillet Vertigo in the invitation class.
Mainly thanks to her outstanding performances in the ELMS, Vanina has been snapped up by Audi to race in the German Touring Car Championship DTM in 2006.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.