In the Italian Mini Challenge championship, young rookie Erika Lavazza stormed to class victory in the second race in Mugello - at her first ever season in auto racing.
Meet Erika Lavazza, one of the youngest and most promising Italian racers competing in Mini Challenge Italia with MINI Roma by Promodrive.
Erika, at only 16 years of age, was selected to be part of the MINI Academy, which gives many opportunities to young drivers such as training with expert engineers and tutors that can help them develop race by race.
She’s the only female racer in the championship but she’s already proved to be one of the fastest: with her orange #77 MINI JCW Challenge Lite, she won Race 2 in Mugello, after a great “learning round” in Vallelunga two weeks earlier.
At the Tuscan racetrack, Lavazza had already showed an excellent pace in Race 1, where she finished 14th overall, but it was on Sunday morning that she really proved her skills: after a thrilling and hectic race, Erika crossed the finish line in third position, 9th overall, and stepped on the podium with Roveda and race winner Maccari. After a while, Maccari and Roveda were penalized, so Erika was promoted to the race win in the Lite category!
After the race, we had the opportunity to talk to her: “This is a new experience for me in all aspects", she said. "First of all because there is an extra feature, namely the manual gearbox: I never used it since I don't even have a driving license yet, so it was really a start from scratch!"
"However, it has been a great experience until now, where I had the opportunity to get to know the most important tracks in Italy and that makes me very happy” - a very thrilled Erika said.
“As a first podium finish, I must say that we have made a good start! Now we go to Imola on 3/4 September and let's see if we can keep up with the others and continue with these good results” - she concluded, and we can’t wait to see her growth in the championship.
