MYLES AHEAD

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The premier driver development program in North America has a fresh look for the 2023 season. Under the hood, so to speak, not much has changed. Uniquely in the world of auto racing, each step on the ladder still offers a scholarship to its champion to ensure graduation to the next level. And the overall goal for every young driver remains a seat at the top table – a ride in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES.

But outwardly, one year after INDYCAR took over as promoter of the top rung on the ladder, INDY NXT Presented by Firestone, the next steps have been rebranded under the umbrella of the USF Pro Championships Presented by Cooper Tires.

The uppermost of these, USF Pro 2000 Presented by Cooper Tires, is shaping up to be perhaps the most competitive of all time. In addition to attracting the largest fields since 2012, it is jam-packed with talent. After 11 of the season’s 18 races, there have been seven different winners and no fewer than eight pole- winners representing five teams and nationalities.

Most of the leading contenders from 2022 have stepped up to INDY NXT, including series champion Louis Foster, who ultimately claimed a scholarship valued at over $614,000 to advance his career. There is a long list of contenders seeking to follow in his footsteps.

Prime among them is Myles Rowe, who has opened up a commanding 64-point lead in the quest to win this year’s Discount Tire Driver Advancement Scholarship, the value of which has been raised to $664,500 to ensure graduation to INDY NXT in 2024.

Rowe, who in 2021 became the first Black driver to win a race on the USF Pro Championships ladder, has stepped up this year from USF2000 Presented by Cooper Tires with the Pabst Racing with Force Indy team. He has taken to the more powerful cars like a duck to water. Rowe, a university graduate from Brooklyn, N.Y., is one of only two drivers to have scored multiple wins (four) and poles (two) prior to this weekend’s Cooper Tires Grand Prix of Toronto.

The other multiple race winner (two) and polesitter (three) is the man who edged Rowe to last year’s USF2000 Championship, Michael d’Orlando (Turn 3 Motorsport). The native of Hartsdale, N.Y., has bounced back impressively from a desperately disappointing start to his campaign in which he experienced all manner of misfortune. But despite vaulting from 11th to sixth in the points table with a strong weekend recently at Mid-Ohio, he still has a mountain to climb with an 82-point deficit to Rowe with only seven races remaining.

The championship order behind Rowe has been shuffled continually with the next 10 drivers separated by just 47 points and a maximum of 33 available from each race.

Brazilian Kiko Porto (DEForce Racing), the 2021 USF2000 champion currently leads the charge, just ahead of

Canadian-owned Exclusive Autosport teammates Joel Granfors, from Sweden, and Salvador de Alba, from Guadalajara, Mexico. The internationally diverse group also includes Italian Francesco Pizzi and Germany-based Albanian Lirim Zendeli, both from TJ Speed Motorsport, Ireland’s Jonathan Browne (Turn 3 Motorsport), and Americans Jace Denmark (Pabst Racing), Jack William Miller (Miller Vinatieri Motorsports) and Reece Ushijima (Jay Howard Driver Development).