The Bäckman siblings aim to bring home the title in 2022
Young karting drivers meets the world elite
Andreas and Jessica Bäckman grew up in the largest military city of Sweden, Boden, and they come from a family with great interest in motorsport. Their uncle used to drive rallycross and is currently driving rally, while their dad always has been fixing cars. Although, their mom is the reason for them starting their racing career, as she registered them to a karting school, which she had read about in the newspaper. In 2006 both Andreas and Jessica started to compete first locally, then nationally and eventually internationally. After ten years of driving on karting tracks in Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, UK, Portugal, Las Vegas and New Orleans, they decided to take the next step in their racing careers in 2017.
Taking the step to rallycross for new experiences
Andreas and Jessica began to drive rallycross, which also included gravel in addition to asphalt. It also brought bigger cars which required a different driving technique. This meant new challenges for the siblings but also gave them a lot of new experiences of car control and shorter races, where you are forced to be alert already from the start.
From rallycross and karting towards Europe´s racing elite
In 2018, Andreas and Jessica took the step up to Racing and started to compete in Touring Cars. During the season they competed in STCC, Scandinavian Touring Car Championship, and also in the British counterpart TCR UK. Additionally, they also did an appearance in the European series TCR Europe. There, they could lean safely against their experiences of both karting and rallycross.
International podium spots brought a desire for more
When Hyundai Motorsport GmbH launched their major junior project in 2019: Hyundai Motorsport Customer Racing Junior Driver (an initiative that promotes selected, promising racing stars), Andreas and Jessica were elected. This includes coaching, developing training and professional media management, and the support was definitely a factor in the siblings' success during the years. Andreas, for example, has two victories in the TCR Europe event in Barcelona and took two consecutive pole-positions during the season, while Jessica took podium spots in four different championships (TCR Europe, TCR Germany, STCC and TCR Scandinavia) during the years. In 2021 the siblings competed in the World Cup och TCR - FIA WTCR. The good results have definitely provided a desire for more and the siblings are now fully investing in bringing home the title in STCC and TCR Germany 2022 – and reaching their future goal of competing in the World Cup, the WTCR series again 2023.