On further testing, it seems this is not a precedence issue but rather one of compatibility: The VMD-type RST driver provided by the laptop manufacturer is not compatible with any of the Windows PE environments. An alternate solution is to inject the AHCI-type drivers from the Windows 11 ADK into the HDM17 boot media. You will find them in the file repository of the WinPE image (winpe.wim). These are the ones from the Windows 11 ADK v22H2:

iastorav.inf_amd64_87f761c07c99d5e7
iastorv.inf_amd64_9c09bd1df352f065

Note that my observations are valid only for the chipset in question.