Vanina Ickx - Father-daughter relationship
11/02/2024
Jacky Ickx was able to celebrate success in every racing class in which he competed. He was twice runner-up in the Formula 1 world championship, won Le Mans six times, was successful in the Paris-Dakar and was also a front-runner in the endurance championship. Ickx's racing career spanned from the 1960s to the 1990s, when he retired from active motorsport. It seemed obvious that the Belgian would become a racing driver - Jacky's father Jacques Ickx was a motor journalist and therefore closely connected to motorsport - but as Jacky says today, he could just as easily have become a gardener. As a child, he could also have imagined a future as a zookeeper. He first acquired a taste for high-speed racing on a 50-cubic-inch ignition bike that his father had organized for him and on which the youngster first came into direct contact with an engine. Jacky Ickx celebrated his first racing successes on two wheels in the shot glass class.
We met Jacky Ickx together with his daughter Vanina at an event organized by his new cooperation partner Genesis in Zurich. The very young brand from Korea has only been in existence for nine years. The brand now intends to enter the hypercar class of the World Endurance Championship WEC next year. However, the lack of a motorsport past for the ambitious new premium supplier from Hyundai clearly does not cause Jacky Ickx any difficulty in establishing a direct link between the Koreans and his own past. The Belgian sees parallels in the form of teamwork, in putting his own needs to one side in favor of the overall result - and probably also a far greater respect for seniority and life experience on the part of the Asians. Family is also a form of teamwork, as Ickx emphasizes. Vanina Ickx, his companion in Zurich, is the younger of two daughters from Jacky's marriage to Catherine Blaton.
"It's nice to see each other occasionally, even if it's just at these joint appearances," said Jacky with a laugh. Vanina lives with her partner and their son in Wiesbaden; father Jacky has settled near Waterloo with his third wife Khadja Nin. When asked how she got into motorsport (Vanina Ickx was active from 1996 to 2012), her answer was surprisingly similar to her father's: "I wasn't very interested in motor racing as a child, I was a real horse girl and also involved in equestrian sports. And my father didn't really bring his world into the family, even if we did go to the racetrack from time to time as children," said the almost 50-year-old Vanina. "It wasn't until I got my driver's license that I acquired a taste for driving. From that moment on, I started to take a closer look at cars. But I didn't get any tips from my father. I got into motorsport more by chance. I met a friend at a fitness club who asked me if I wanted to take over her cockpit in a BMW touring car, as she was pregnant and therefore had to take a break from racing. I really had no idea about racing back then!"
Certainly, Vanina Ickx's famous name as a motorsport rookie may have helped her a little. However, as a woman, she also always saw her involvement realistically and thus still shares her assessment of her own chances with her father's view at the time, who once proclaimed with great conviction that racing was a man's sport. Today, however, father Ickx is a little more nuanced, and Jacky added that evening that there was no physical reason why women could not be just as successful in the cockpit as men. Her daughter, however, confirmed that the way of fighting, a certain pride of men and still prevailing, partly diffuse reservations would definitely justify this old-fashioned statement: Motorsport had remained a man's sport: "As a woman, you are definitely measured differently than as a man, so even a well-known name is of hearty little use. As a woman, it's not enough to be equally good."
"It was interesting to meet my father in a different, new way," said Vanina Ickx about their joint appearances as a racing team, for example at the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps or the Paris-Dakar Rally. Vanina Ickx's racing career was characterized by many changes and starts in various racing series, from Mini to LMP1 and also some races in the monoposto. However, she never really made a breakthrough, perhaps her entry into the world of motorsport at the age of almost 20 was too late and an irreparable handicap. In addition, her goal had always been to complete her biology degree. "My father never interfered with me. Of course we exchanged ideas on occasion - just like you do between racing drivers - but he always encouraged my independence and always stayed in the background."
Just as father Ickx once did with his son Jacky, the passion was passed on to his daughter without any active involvement from her parents. And today, father and daughter, whose motorsport careers have taken very different paths, sit together on the same stage. During the evening in Zurich, it became clear that enthusiasm can also be transferred purely by example - but also a good example of the fact that personal passions are not automatically passed on.
