Sebastian Wheldon, who was two years old when his IndyCar champion father was killed in the tragic Las Vegas race in 2011, won two of the three races in last weekend’s opening round of the USF Juniors series at NOLA Motorsports Park, and was second in the other.
Wheldon, who along with younger brother Oliver is a protege of Andretti Global, took his first single-seater racing steps last year in the centrally run Skip Barber school series, before joining the VRD Racing team of expat Brit Dan Mitchell over the winter.
“He did a test with us in December, and they signed with us in January,” Mitchell told Autosport.
“I think we were the obvious choice for them, and we managed to get the deal done with Andretti to move forward.
“As soon as we put him in the car with us in December, we knew he was a very good talent.”
Wheldon immediately was a race winner with VRD in the YACademy winter series for F4 cars, before lining up on the grid for USF Juniors – the lowest rung on the IndyCar support ladder, which uses a lower-spec version of the same base Tatuus chassis/Mazda engine machine from the senior USF2000 and USF Pro 2000 categories.
“NOLA was his first ever ‘sanctioned’ race,” explained Mitchell. “Skip Barber is a great learning platform, and in YACademy he did very well.”
With qualifying split into two groups at NOLA, Wheldon shared pole position honours with British ex-Ginetta Junior/GB4 ace Liam McNeilly – racing for the Jay Howard Driver Development team – and it was this duo who fought in the races.
McNeilly won the second race, while Wheldon’s VRD team-mate Max Taylor was also involved in the scrap for victory in the finale.
Source: Autosport