Daniel Vasile: welcome on Top

Starting with the most recent result, the Italian Championship title secured at Viterbo in the final round, we can also get an idea of how Daniel approaches multi-round championships: “Actually, when I look back at the Italian Championship, I think I won the title without winning a single Final. I did win several Prefinals, though, and I was careful to manage the standings without making mistakes, keeping the final points haul in mind.” A 'strategic driver', as they might have called him in the past, but one who knows how to combine aggression and composure in a race: “KZ is a very competitive category and you often have to fight very hard. A small contact is enough to put you out or force you to recover positions from the back. Let’s say that over the years I’ve learned to wait for the right moment to attack, and also to understand whether it is better to get straight into the fight or whether it is wiser to manage the race and wait for the right opportunity.”

 

Just one week earlier, at Le Mans, Vasile had taken a podium in the Top Class during Gustafsson’s perfect weekend, coming close to a historic result for Maranello Team: “Viktor didn’t put a foot wrong and drove incredibly well from the first free practice session to the final lap of the Final, but I’m still proud of the result we achieved. To be there with such a small gap at the end, improving gradually in every heat, was the culmination of a great deal of work – especially considering that we were not among the favourites going into the weekend and that I hadn’t been among the very fastest in qualifying either. In the heats, I tried to limit the damage, because as I said, this is a category that doesn’t forgive mistakes and you can be out in an instant – sometimes through no fault of your own. But deep down, heat after heat, I knew I could fight for the podium.”

 

Daniel Vasile’s story begins in Romania. Born and raised in Bucharest, where he still lives, he started racing in 2010 at the age of ten, competing in his first Minikart races in a country with little karting tradition and just three circuits in the entire country. He then raced in KF Junior and, in 2016, decided that if he wanted to make the next step, he had to go where “the good ones” were racing: Italy. “At first it was tough. I took a lot of hits,” he recalls with a laugh, “but that’s the only way to understand where you stand and whether you have the determination to take on the challenge and reach the top. That year I did a few WSK races in OK and I also managed to race in the very first World Championship for the OK category, in Bahrain, which Hiltbrand won. He is now one of my strongest rivals in KZ.”

 

In 2017, he moved up to KZ with Danilo Rossi (DR) and embarked on a long apprenticeship, which included several strong results in the WSK series. This eventually took him first to Birel Art, where he also raced with the CL livery in 2025, and finally to Maranello, where he seems to have found the right environment to emerge: “It’s a smaller team compared to the teams I had raced with in previous years, and at first I had to adapt. I wanted to do well at all costs and I was in a hurry to get results. They helped me to calm down, so to speak. I learned to stay calm and I have to say that… it worked out well.”

His CV also includes a victory at the 2024 Supernats in Las Vegas, a unique experience in its own way: “That is a particular race,” he recalls. “Even though it takes place on a temporary track in a car park, it attracts the best KZ and KZ2 drivers. There is no margin for error and you have to be fully focused. For me, it was the result that made me realise I could race alongside the top drivers in the category.” A conclusion that, looking at his 2026 season, is difficult not to share.