PRESS - Quote from The Argus - 30 May 2009
NIKI LANIK HAS WASTED NO TIME AFTER STEPPING ON TO THE EUROPEAN STAGE.
The 22-year-old Austrian from Ashurst Wood has bypassed the British championship after switching to GT racing.
Lanik, the double UK Clio Cup winter champion, is competing in the European FIA GT3 Championship after signing up to race a Porsche 997 with the Belgium-based Prospeed Competition team.
It was a long winter for the ambitious Lanik as he considered whether to move on from the Clio Cup, where he was sixth overall in the main series last year after a number of podium finishes in the second half of the season.
He had various options to pursue but a decision was made after appointing former professional racer Justin Keen as his manager.
He explained: “I met up with Justin who has done a lot in his career, including the International F3000 in a Minardi, and he is now my manager.
“He is very good for me. I signed the contract in March and in April we booked some flights to Portugal to test a Porsche.
“That went pretty well and we signed with a Belgium-based team. They have got two GT3s and two GT2s in the FIA GT Championship and they also do some other championships like Le Mans and endurance racing.
“Porsche support the team and they are very professional. We went over to Belgium after the test to sign the contract.”
The GT3 series is a support race to the main FIA GT Championship. Drivers are largely amateur, whereas all our professional in the main series, and they race a variety of sports cars including Aston Martins, Ferraris, Ford, Jaguar, Lamborghinis and Porsches.
There are two drivers per car, although each qualifies individually. There are two races at each meeting and each driver will start one race before handing over to the second driver at the midway point of the one-hour race.
The first round of the series was at Silverstone where Lanik, who was making his competitive debut in the car, qualified 18th out of 37 and got up to 11th before handing over to his team-mate who went on to finish 14th.
In the second race, his team-mate started 28th on the grid and was up to 21st before handing over to Lanik who unfortunately wrote off the Porsche at the first turn.
The second round at Adria in Italy went much better as Lanik came fourth and sixth out of 31 cars in the two races.
Those results have left Lanik equal 13th in the series with four of the 12 races gone, although he is only four points off seventh spot. In the Porsche part of the championship he is fourth overall and just five points off top spot.
Lanik said: “It is a great championship because all the cars are very evenly matched so it comes down to good racing.
“There is a big following for the championship. I went to get some good results, do well in the Porsche championship and try to get in the top five overall. It is the first step to the GT Championship.”
There are further rounds to come at Oschersleben in Germany next month, Portugal in September, France in October and Dubai in November.
Lanik flew to Germany last week to walk the track in preparation for the next round and is spending a lot of time in the gym on the advice of his manager.
He said: “Justin tells me to go to the gym and get as fit as I can be.
“He is a very good. He has contracts, he knows how to get people interested in me and how to get paid for racing eventually. He was a pro for a for years and he can help me achieve that.
“It was good to check out Oschersleben. I walked the track and now I will be lapping it in my mind every day before we compete there on June 20-21.”
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