Difference between revisions of "Pieter Kickert"

Latest revision as of 08:39, 26 July 2022

Pieter Kickert, pictured in 2015
Details
Name	Pieter Kickert
Born	12th Feb 1971
Nationality	Dutch
Achievements
Two-time Life GP race winner

Pieter Kickert (born 12th February 1971) is a Dutch racing car driver famous for his early exploits in Life GP and later for his extensive touring car career. He is also the father of racing driver Emma Kickert. Since retiring from racing, he has taken over as the head of McEwan Automotive's junior driver programme.

Early Career

Kickert started out racing at 16 when he entered minor races at his local track Zandvoort. He showed his talent quickly winning many races, and spent the following four years competing in club and national races in the Netherlands, earning enough prize and sponsorship money to pursue an international career.

Life Grand Prix Season

In 1991, Kickert entered the new Life Grand Prix Series as it was an international series in which he could afford to buy his own car to compete. However, he overestimated the reliability of the car, and bought too few spare parts. After several mechanical failures left him with no parts and little money to replace them with, he announced that he would withdraw his team's entries from the coming rounds. Foster's Good Call Racing immediately offered him a drive in one of their cars. Kickert accepted and rewarded their faith with instant results. In just his second race for the team, he finished second in Belgium. Two races later, he won his first race at the Luxembourg Life GP after it was red-flagged early due to a track invasion.

He also gained a reputation for being stubborn after he completed the majority of the European round without a front wing, still scoring points for a fifth place finish. Later, he would repeat a similar trick by driving much of the Portuguese round with a car that was stuck in first gear. His performances were enough to earn him a second season with Good Call, and his 1992 season started well with a win in Spain and a pole position in Austria. However, things went sideways for Kickert when he suffered an injury in a scary crash at Zolder. He would be replaced by former Formula One World Champion Jérémy-Étienne Voeckler, who was out of contract at Williams and bored. When Voeckler announced that he would also run the last three rounds of the year, Good Call gave Kickert sufficient support to self-enter a car under the Kickert Motorsport Engineering banner.

In 1993, Kickert again chose to run his shoestring owner-driver operation. This would be his toughest season yet: despite two second places and a respectable 18 points overall, his efforts were only good enough for 12th in the Championship. With no 1994 season of Life Grand Prix for him to continue in, it was time for Kickert to move up the motorsport ladder.

International Formula 3000

For the 1994 season, Kickert found himself a drive in International Formula 3000. Despite the chaos of Formula One that year, Kickert did not get called up by any teams in that series. He also chose to remain in Formula 3000 in 1995.

Formula One

Finally, Pieter Kickert's breakthrough came when he found a drive in Formula One for the 1996 season. This was already a heady time for the Dutchman, as he was also celebrating the birth of his daughter Emma. It must therefore have been crushing for Kickert when on the eve of the Australian Grand Prix, his team announced that they would not be able to compete in Formula One after all due to a funding shortfall.

Sports and Touring Cars

After this experience, Kickert turned his back on open-wheelers and chose to focus instead on the world of touring and sports cars. He paired a full-time drive in WTCM with occasional sportscar drives in major races, such as the 2000 24 Hours of Le Mans with a privately entered Porsche and the 2006 24 Hours of Le Mans with the McEwan Automotive team.

In 2015, Kickert was signed by ZimSport in the 2015 Rejects Touring Car Championship. Kickert was the fastest qualifier in the entire series with four pole positions out of eight attempts. Despite this, his highest finish was only a third place at Knockhill, and the season would go from bad to worse when Kickert found himself banned from the round in Suzuka due to what appeared to be a mechanical failure. Rather than replace their driver, ZimSport opted to withdraw from the remaining two rounds of the Championship and focus instead on preparations for the 2016 season. That year, Kickert would add three further pole positions to his resume, but a best result of second place meant he remained winless in the Championship.

As the series was entirely rebranded for 2017, Kickert announced that he was retiring from full-time competition. He did however enter four rounds of the season as an owner-driver, including another second place in Canada.

Post-Retirement

Following his retirement from racing, Kickert focussed initially on managing the career of his daughter Emma. However, after a horror-season in 2019 she opted to take a sabbatical from racing to go to university and study full time. Shortly thereafter, Kickert accepted employment at McEwan Automotive, and when the organisation sought to make its way into Formula One for the 2023 season, they announced that Kickert would be in charge of their junior programme.

Career Results

Career Summary

Life Grand Prix Series

Touring Cars