Vanina Ickx is the daughter of Jacky Ickx, widely regarded as one of the greatest endurance racing drivers of all time, and his first wife Catherine. She came to racing relatively late, not entering competition until 1996 when she joined the BMW Compact Cup alongside its most successful regular entrant, Stéphane De Groodt. The following year she raced her own car in the Cup before moving up to the Belgian Procar series in 1998, sharing a BMW 320i with Sylvie Delcour under Super Production regulations.
In 1998 she also transferred to the Renault team, partnering Franck Lagorce. She earned her first podium that year, though the season was not without incident: sharing a car with her father Jacky at the Spa 24 Hours, she was responsible for a crash that ended their run — a setback she acknowledged openly.
She remained with Renault in 1999, then joined Peugeot for 2000, a season that produced a career-high third place overall at the Spa 24 Hours. That same year brought her first outright victory in the Ferrari Challenge, adding a different dimension to her résumé.
In 2004 she returned to a full-time programme in the Belcar championship, which she had first contested in previous years. The campaign concluded with Ickx claiming the Ladies Trophy, and she also recorded a second Ferrari Challenge win, a class victory at the Spa 24 Hours, and a podium at the Oman Desert Rally Raid. A guest appearance in the Porsche Supercup at the Belgian Grand Prix rounded out a busy year.
Alongside her GT and touring car work, Ickx made repeated appearances at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In 2005 she stepped into the LMP1 category in the Le Mans Endurance Series, driving the Rollcentre Racing Dallara SP1, and achieved three consecutive third-place class finishes across the season — a run of consistency at the highest level of prototype endurance racing.
That year also produced a class victory in the FIA GT Championship's Chinese round, racing a Belgian-built Gillet Vertigo in the invitation class.
Having sampled rally raids earlier in her career, Ickx made her Dakar Rally debut in 2000, co-driving with her father Jacky. She entered the Dakar a further two times, with her final participation in 2002. The venture demonstrated the breadth of her motorsport ambitions beyond circuit racing.
Audi signed Ickx to compete in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters for the 2006 and 2007 seasons, giving her access to one of European touring car racing's most prestigious series. She was replaced for the 2008 season by Katherine Legge.
In July 2010, Ickx became the first driver to take the wheel of the Citroën Survolt, a concept electric racing car, at Le Mans. In October 2011 she participated in the World Solar Challenge with the Umicore Solar Team and also competed in the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup that year.
In the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, Ickx added another dimension to an already varied career profile.
Ickx married Benjamin de Broqueville in 2014. They have two children: a son, Ado, born in April 2013, and a daughter, Khadija, born in 2017.
Vanina Ickx built a credible and wide-ranging career independent of her famous surname. Her third overall at Spa in 2000, her consistent LMP1 results in the Le Mans Endurance Series, and her two seasons in the DTM with Audi marked her as a genuine competitor across disciplines. Racing alongside her father on multiple occasions, she maintained her own racing identity rather than trading exclusively on the Ickx name.