Focus on: Nicolai Sylvest, #11 in the ranking

This week, we focus on TCR Denmark star Nicolai Sylvest, twice third place in the drivers’ championship, and with nine wins in the last two years he’s currently placed 11th in the KUMHO TCR World Ranking.

The Danish driver switched from GT3 to TCR as the Danish series was launched at the beginning of 2020, which was instantly launched as one of the most competitive of the national TCR categories.

“I’d driven in Formula 3 and GT3, so I already had quite a lot of experience,” said Sylvest. “In 2020 we established TCR, and it was immediately the top motorsport category in Denmark, so that’s where my touring car story began. We started out with the old Volkswagen Golf GTI, whereas our competitors had the Honda which was a far better car at the time. The next year we moved to the CUPRA Leon Competición which was a completely new car. We had no experience at all of the car, and then the next year the tyres changed, so we’ve always been having to learn something new to try and play catch up.”

Sylvest’s team-mate in his first season was touring car star and former Formula 1 driver Jan Magnussen, a multiple champion in the former Danish Touring Car Championship, which was a great benchmark to have but also a challenge, as the two were competing with each other to fight for the title against Kasper H. Jensen’s Honda.

“When you have two drivers in a team that are trying to be the first driver, it’s a bit difficult to make work in the team, as there always is when there’s a lot of internal competition.”

After racing on his own last year in the new Green Development team, Sylvest will have a team-mate this year as Lars Hølris joins the team.

“Lars will be a top ten driver for sure, he is capable of some great results. The focus this year is to be the champion, but I’m always open for different opportunities. I have experience in Formula and GT cars, although now I’m nearly 2m tall, I can’t fit a lot of single-seaters anymore, so I guess GT and touring cars is my future.”

Sylvest says the new KUMHO TCR World Ranking is a very useful tool to monitor the performance of drivers competing across TCR and gives a new objective to aim for.

“Everybody in this field is very competitive, and when you see a ranking where you can get your name at the top of the rest, it instantly becomes something that you aim for. It’s very nice to see my name near the top, and also that there’s room for improvement. It’s awesome to be against big names from the other championships. It helps validate that with all the experience I have what I’m doing right now is the right thing to do. I also think it’s a very good tool to have. And a lot of times when I’ve been through different motorsports in other series, drivers can sometimes choose a nice easy class to race in, while it’s very nice that the TCR World Ranking weights the competitions, so you can’t just easily to get to number 1 by just racing in a non-competitive series.”

Picture: TCR Denmark