Ready to Go!

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Hey everyone! Welcome to 2020 and the start of a new season of racing. It’s been a plenty long off-season with me mostly focused on schooling and colleges for the upcoming years. As well, I have been working on the physical aspect of my racing with a significant amount of training and prepping for the new season.

As many of you may know, I signed with Cape Motorsports for the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship for this year. I’ll be following in the footsteps of a long line of Team USA Scholarship alumni who have driven for the Cape brothers, Dominic and Nicholas, in the past, including Oliver Askew, Kyle Kirkwood and Braden Eves who have won the title in each of the past three years. There’s no pressure then! In fact, Cape Motorsports has won the last nine championships in succession and have proved to be the strongest team in the paddock for a long time. After a multitude of pre-season tests it’s clear how determined they are to make it 10 in a row!

This past weekend saw my first official timed sessions of the 2020 season, with the Road To Indy Spring Training Presented by Cooper Tires at Homestead-Miami Speedway in south Florida. In all we had five official test sessions set up across two days. Over the course of the weekend, I (and the rest of the drivers) got to meet a number of the Road To Indy staff as well as get introduced to a few of their season partners, including SimMetric Driver Performance Labs, which will have its impressive on-site simulation equipment at all race events this year. In addition we were all briefed on the expectations for the coming season in regards to regulations and a comprehensive media training seminar.

In our final classroom setting before we all went on-track for the first time, there was an obvious hint of anxiety moving around the room. We were all eager to get started, not just because we wanted to drive but because we wanted to see where we stacked up. It was the first time we’d get a chance to see our name highlighted in purple at the top of the time sheets, or see where we fall in the line of 20-odd talented drivers locked in for the season.

It was a lot of fun getting more familiarized with the new car and a brand new track to me. The pace was very strong across the two days for me and my three teammates, despite the ridiculously high tire wear Homestead-Miami Speedway causes, and our race simulation runs were extremely promising. I feel I’m 100 percent ready for the first two races of the season this coming weekend at St. Petersburg and can’t wait to get my head down. With only one 30-minute practice session for the USF2000 class on Thursday morning, it’ll have to be some very quick learning before we get out for qualifying later that day. So, until after St. Petersburg, thank you for your support!