This weekend, twenty young drivers from across the world will fight it out for a $200,000 scholarship which will see them onto the 2019 USF2000 grid. The youngest contestant, Colin Mullan, is just sixteen years old with the other drivers ranging from seventeen to twenty-five. The event is taking place at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park with the track action spanning over today and tomorrow on the 1.6-mile circuit.
The scholarship competition has been running since 2016 and this year there were twenty-five eligible feeder series with around four hundred drivers in contention for a place in the shootout.
The weekend kicked off out of the cars with a welcome gala last night where all the drivers could get acquainted with their fellow competitors and the judges.
Drivers will be in Formula Mazda cars, taking part in three sessions across the weekend – two on Saturday and one on Sunday morning. After the Sunday session, judges will cut the field down and the remaining drivers will take part in two qualifying rounds, setting up for a mock race at the end of the day. From this, the winner of the scholarship will be announced at around 4:00 pm local time (11 pm GMT).
The judging panel is a talented list of representatives from both Mazda and the Road to Indy programme. Mazda has sent long-serving factory representatives Andrew Carbonell and Tom Long and from the Road to Indy we’ve got Indy Lights race winner Tom Long, last year’s Pro Mazda champion Victor Franzoni and the very first shootout winner, Oliver Askew, who won the USF2000 championship the following year.
Coverage of the event will be provided by Road to Indy TV (http://roadtoindy.tv/) and it’ll certainly be something to check out if you get the chance.
The twenty hopeful drivers’ names, ages and nationalities are listed below:
Guillaume Archambault, 24, Canada
Dario Cangialosi, 18, USA
Bryce Cornet, 25, USA
Jake Craig, 21, USA
Allan Croce, 21, Brazil
Courtney Crone, 17, USA
Michael Eastwell, 22, UK (England)
Braden Eves, 19, USA
Flinn Lazier, 19, USA
Ross Martin, 19, UK (Scotland)
Hunter McElrea, 19, Australia
Matt Round-Garrido, 18, UK (England)
Colin Mullan, 16, USA
Tyler O’Connor, 21, USA
Ryan Norberg, 20, USA
Raghul Rangasamy, 25, India
Jason Reichert, 19, USA
Kellen Ritter, 17, Canada
James Roe Jr, 20, Ireland
Stuart White, 17, South Africa
Featured Image: Photos @ Indianapolis Motor Speedway, LLC Photography