While Maiko Tamm became the first driver to add his name to the Pro-Am Supercar championship, Guillaume De Ridder is not unhappy with Viktor Vranckx’s second place overall.
The duel between the young Estonian driver of the TT Motorsport team and his young Belgian counterpart was intense right to the end. Despite an early retirement for Vranckx on the penultimate stage of the RallyX championship in Norway at the end of August, the gap between Maiko Tamm and the FIA RX2e 2022 champion was just four points at the end of the final round in Holjes.
While Viktor Vranckx managed to win the first three races of the 2023 season, Maiko Tamm responded perfectly with two victories in the last five rounds of the year.
And while the title ultimately eluded the Belgian driver, his mentor Guillaume De Ridder preferred to focus on the many positive elements that had enabled his protégé to confirm his progress.
“The introduction of the Pro-Am championship in RallyX was a really good thing,” stresses Guillaume De Ridder.
“It enabled Viktor to learn how to manage races when he was in trouble as soon as he came out of the first corner. Naturally, this meant we had to work much harder on our strategies. At times, we had to attempt decisive overtaking maneuvers, and even if it’s always difficult to overtake in Rallycross, it was even more so for Viktor, who inevitably found it hard to keep up with the real Supercars on the straights. This means having to be clever in planning his moves, something he hadn’t had much opportunity to work on in the FIA RX2e championship, where he has been a consistent front-runner over the last two years. One thing’s for sure, even with second place overall in his pocket, Viktor has had a great season”.
Powered only by the electric ZEROID, whose performance is far inferior to that of his rivals, Viktor Vranckx has taken another step forward in his development in the eyes of Guillaume De Ridder.
“In any case, as a driver, there’s nothing better than being able to fight with equipment that’s weaker than his rivals’. It’s a bit like a cyclist going to fine-tune his preparation in the mountains, where there’s inevitably less oxygen available. Once back at sea level, everything will seem much easier, and it’s around this same dynamic that we tried to work with Viktor. This pushed him to go for the limit all the time. He had to drive at 100% of his ability, while trying to minimize his margin for error at all times, so that can only be positive for the future”
