Our Driver of the Month for March 2025 is Antony Wypych

We caught up with him this week to discuss his early days in karting and the first round of the DMAX National Champs:

Wypych was introduced to karting by his Dad at the age of six. He quickly rose through the ranks of Ace Karting in Walsall before moving onto TeamSport Birmingham. He describes these early years as a period of slow progression. Despite this, the immense passion for motorsport sparked by his Dad remained unwavering, and the pair looked to take the next step in the young driver's career. They came to Daytona, where Wypych describes the move to outdoor karting as more challenging than any night on track he had experienced before. However, this school of hard knocks set the wheels in motion for his rise, and he quickly graduated from the SODI World Series into the DMAX-GT SuperChamps at Daytona Tamworth. He was soon competing in his first international race in Poland's Karting World Championship series, where he cut his teeth against a stacked series of racers from around the world. As a result, he developed a more aggressive technique and the mental fortitude to maintain focus and pace, which has brought him 4x National Finalist titles.

Wypych cites his greatest driving influence as Robert Kubica – a fellow Polish driver and, notably, the nation's only F1 driver. Glimmers of this driving style, hinged on skill and precision, are evident in Wypych, who hopes to follow a similar path to Kubica in the coming years.

Faced with his next challenge – the DMAX National Championships, Wypych studied the track, drawing upon experience gained from watching the likes of Ruben Boutens in the PIKC and lap record holders at Daytona, as well as researching his competitors. He described this process as daunting to an extent when faced with the high calibre of drivers he was to compete against, from previous championship winners to professional drivers. The 17-year-old was understated and humble in our conversation. He did not hype up his skills but seemed confident in his abilities without the need for external validation – a characteristic developed from years of experience and rarely seen in sportsmen today.

He was seen on National Champs day to be calm and collected, walking the track with his Dad and rehearsing his lines. The schedule began early in the day with an hour-long endurance race in which Wypych was competing as the youngest driver in the Inters category. He faced up against a pedigree of talent who, by rights, vastly outweighed him in experience. This trial by fire began, as he puts it, with a poor start, falling from first to fourth, followed by a 40-minute period of cruising before the storm of the last five minutes of the race. Wypych may be described as a technical driver; he seems to analyse his opponents to diagnose their weaknesses in order to capitalise on them while using their strengths to develop his own arsenal of tricks. He highlights the competitiveness and aggression of that first endurance race, in which he went on to take home P2. This alone is an incredible result, one which the bookies would never have predicted. However, the hour of battles against P1 winner Owen Jenman was undoubtedly Wypych's greatest trial. He describes it as unlike anything he has faced before, in their relentless battle for the lead. The battle was described throughout the live reporting of the race as "neck and neck, taking turns to get ahead of one another for the lead."

In this age-old story of the veteran and the rising star, Jenman took the lead at the final flag – his immense experience is highly respected at Daytona, and he is a driver very few would feel begrudged to come second to. However, the Heats Race provided a new battlefield for the new foes. It is essential to note that Wypych made his Daytona debut last year, and his only championship experience of our Sandown Park track is through social media and YouTube. Despite this, he went into the Heats with renewed vigour and an adjusted strategy to push for more aggression in the overtakes in order to capitalise on any possible chance against Jenman.

Much like the Endurance, the spectators of the Heats were drawn largely to the same two karts. Two drivers in red and blue suits respectively doing battle from lights to flag, always within a kart's length of one another. However, the culmination of Wypych's cinematic rise came in the final laps, where he was able to pull a move on Jenman to take the lead and maintain the edge over the final line in one of the greatest underdog stories we have seen in our Championship's history.

Wypych reflected on this as the greatest achievement of his karting career thus far. He surprised spectators, staff, and drivers alike in his unyielding performance underlined by a driving style he describes as consistent, patient, and cut-throat. Given the next round of the championships is in Tamworth (Wypych's home track), I believe there will be a new favourite for the race. Wypych has highlighted himself as one to watch for the top spot of his category; he is clearly an immensely talented young driver and someone we are keen to see return to what may be a continued odyssey of battles in Round Two.