One of the hottest new talents in this year’s GB3 Championship won’t even be contesting the first two race weekends, but he’s a race winner already this season on the IndyCar support bill.
That’s because St Petersburg starlet Nikita Johnson is only 15 years old. The age rules in the US are less restrictive – he’s now in his third year on the IndyCar open-wheel ladder, and he took his first victory in an F4 car at the tender age of 12, in the YACademy series. “That seems a long time ago now…” he muses.
Johnson is the product of the junior programme of Velocity Racing Development, the Georgia team based at the state’s Atlanta Motorsport Park and set up by expat East Midlander Dan Mitchell, who moved from Fortec Motorsport and the European scene to the States in 2017. He’s now bringing North American talents in the opposite direction across the Atlantic as a tie-up with the long-established Arden team. “I engineer Nikita and Noah [Ping],” says Mitchell. “It’s VRD-engineered and VRD-managed. We use Arden mechanics and logistics.”
“I met Dan in 2017,” recalls Johnson, whose first steps in cars came on dirt tracks in Legends. “After that I started with a different team and did one test [in open-wheelers] but since then my whole career has been with him.”
“Nikita was our first academy driver when he was 11 – the first product of what we’ve launched,” adds Mitchell, who now has Johnson’s 11-year-old brother Kai on his books. “I took the philosophy I learnt here and implemented it in the US. I got strong-armed into it and it’s the best thing I ever did. I coach the drivers like when I was an F3 engineer. There’s no difference in driver talent [in the US] – it’s just the way they do it.
“GB3 has always been a passion of mine, and I’m proud it’s doing so well because I believe in ‘F3’ in Britain. GB3 is the best championship in the world for value for money.”
Source: Autosport