Road to Indy Category

By Christopher DeHarde, Staff Writer The 2017 F4 U.S. champion has a home in the Mazda Road to Indy presented by Cooper Tires. Kyle Kirkwood drove for Cape Motorsports in 2017 and will have an opportunity to compete for them again in the 2018 Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship powered by Mazda. Kirkwood was a recipient of the Team USA Scholarship program with fellow Jupiter, Fl. native Oliver Askew. The pair have raced against each other in karting for years. “We started this journey with Kyle over a year ago, with theRead More

By Christopher DeHarde, Staff Writer After some downtime following the new year, the Mazda Road to Indy presented by Cooper Tires has had a few driver announcements in recent days that have helped shape the grids across the three championships. In the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship powered by Mazda, Canadian team Exclusive Autosport announced Mexican pilot Manuel Cabrera while DEForce Racing confirmed their trio of drivers for the season. Kory Enders will rejoin the team he spent his rookie season with, while Colin Kaminsky joins the team after spending much ofRead More

SASKATOON, SK (February 15, 2018) – Exclusive Autosport is pleased to announce that Mexican driver Manuel Cabrera will fill their second seat for the 2018 Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda. The 17-year-old will make his Mazda Road to Indy debut this year, having spent the 2017 season competing in the Formula PanAm and Formula Master Asia series. Cabrera won the Formula PanAm championship and was rewarded with a ticket to the Mazda Road to Indy $200,000 Scholarship Shootout and was he also acknowledged as the Rookie of theRead More

By Road to Indy PALMETTO, Fla. – Victor Franzoni burst onto the Mazda Road to Indy Presented by Cooper Tires scene in 2014, winning his first-ever race in the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda on the streets of St. Petersburg, Fla. With his irrepressible grin and unfailingly positive attitude, Franzoni made fans on and off the racetrack. As the Pro Mazda Championship Presented by Cooper Tires came down to the wire last September, with Juncos Racing’s Franzoni and Cape Motorsports’ Anthony Martin fighting tooth-and-nail for every inch ofRead More

By Road to Indy PALMETTO, Fla. (February 6, 2018) – The Mazda Road to Indy USF2000 $200K Scholarship Shootout will continue for a third successive year in 2018, extending its reach to now include 11 countries where 20 champions of junior open-wheel and karting series from around the world will join together in the December event. Drivers between the ages of 14 and 25 by September 30 of this year will be eligible to earn an invitation to the competition via a network of Official Feeder Series in both NorthRead More

By Christopher DeHarde, Staff Writer Canada’s hero is moving up the Mazda Road to Indy. Exclusive Autosport announced that the Parker Thompson will be racing one of their new PM-18s in the 2018 Pro Mazda Championship presented by Cooper Tires. The Red Deer, Alberta native finished second in the 2016 Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship powered by Mazda to Anthony Martin, and won three races last season in the  USF2000 championship for Exclusive Autosport. Those wins included a sweep of the streets of Toronto and a victory at the Mid-Ohio Sports CarRead More

By Road to Indy Nikita Lastochkin took a very different route to the Mazda Road to Indy Presented by Cooper Tires than many of his fellow competitors. With no motorsports background growing up in Moscow, Lastochkin did not start racing until the age of 22, after moving to the United States. Here, the now 27-year-old entering his sophomore Pro Mazda Championship Presented by Cooper Tires season, talks about coming to America at the age of 16, how he first got the racing bug and how taking racing cues from ColtonRead More

By Christopher DeHarde, Staff Writer After a 2017 Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship powered by Mazda that resulted in five podiums and fourth place in the championship standings, Kaylen Frederick will be returning to the championship for a sophomore season in 2018, but with Pabst Racing. Frederick spent 2017 with Team Pelfrey, starting the season with four top five finishes and ending with nine top fives and 12 top 10 finishes out of 14 races. “After testing in the off-season in BRDC F3, Pro Mazda, Formula Atlantic and USF2000, working with PilotRead More

Newman Wachs Racing is pleased to announce its third driver for the 2018 Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda, confirming Cincinnati, Ohio’s David Osborne. The 21-year-old has been hard at work developing his skills and racecraft in the F1600 series, before testing with NWR last October at the Chris Griffis Memorial test. Osborne will now join Newman Wachs Racing’s two previously-confirmed drivers – Darren Keane and Oscar Deluzuriaga. “David tested with us in October at Indy and I was impressed by the way he went about everything and withRead More

By Road to Indy Brazilian Lucas Kohl recently announced his decision to return to Pabst Racing and the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda for a third season – his second with the Oconomowoc, Wis.-based team that won the Team Championship in 2017. A karting standout in his homeland, Kohl, 19, knew the country’s junior formula series would not take him where he wanted to go. With former IndyCar and Formula 1 star Roberto Moreno as his coach and mentor, Kohl made the move to the United States andRead More