On the back of taking nine honours last season, a new-look Maniti Racing will be taking on 2022/23 with renewed pressure to perform at the top level once again. It has been a busy off-season for them, as they dropped T3 Motorsport from their title over the summer, so how will this affect them? We spoke to Yvo de Brouwer to find out more.
De Brouwer promised that Maniti “will continue to work as we always did according to our philosophy”, making it clear that the T3 Motorsport departure will have little effect on how they operate. The team only announced the change back in January of this year, just before their four year anniversary, a step they hoped would connect them further with real life motorsport.
They would go on to win a further four titles with this new name. De Brouwer said: “We had a good structure in place and also had the drivers to execute on race day. That on a consistent basis set us apart from the other teams over the season”, bringing them great success.
The famous green machines dominated the HyperX GT Sprint Series in the second half of last season, winning by 247 points and taking seven race wins along the way. This was impressive, but their impressive showings across the board were no more apparent in the 2022 Winter Season of the IVRA Endurance Series. They won the GTE and GT3 Pro classes with relative ease, and stole the GT3 Am title from Satellite Racing at Road Atlanta with a famous win.
So how did they do it? “We had a clear objective and from then on we just focused on working together in little groups for each car to first ensure each car can get to their limit first and then combining the knowledge between the cars as the final step to success”. This level of coordination and teamwork is seen in the very best simracing teams across iRacing, and Maniti Racing are on their way to big things with the momentum they currently hold.
However, with that success comes pressure. Stronger competition and a dream-like 2021/22 season have combined to make 2022/23 Maniti Racing’s 3rd IVRA season their toughest so far. De Brouwer said: “We will be heading into this IVRA season with many new drivers paired with some from last year so it will be a new challenge and we will try to combine the fresh energy with experience”.
Combining new faces with existing ones is always tricky but if history is anything to go by, Maniti Racing will be just fine. The T3 Motorsport departure shouldn’t get to them, the physical structure of the team seems to have taken on very little change since last season. And who can blame them? They have all the assets needed to have a great 2022/23 season.
Sweet article, will this be a common thing with teams?
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