SuperKartsUSA

My SKUSA years: shifter karts, Pro Tour, and a ticket to Valencia

I was 12 years old when I decided I wanted to be a professional racecar driver, and karting was step one. These weren't the karts you rent at a birthday party. 80cc two-strokes, 6-speed gearboxes, 100+ mph on the long tracks.

Local tracks first

I started at regional events in the Pacific Northwest, grinding laps at places like Pat's Acres in Canby, Oregon. Won enough locally that moving up to the national circuit felt like the only logical next step.

SuperKarts! USA was the top of the food chain in North America. Their ProMoto Tour was where the serious drivers went, and the 80cc shifter class was the premier category. If you wanted to be taken seriously in US karting, that's where you had to race, so that's where we went.

The national circuit

I raced the SKUSA ProMoto Tour in the 80cc shifter class. Traveled the country while still in high school. Vegas, Phoenix, New Jersey, California. Fly in Thursday, practice Friday, qualify and race Saturday and Sunday, fly home Monday, back in class Tuesday.

The competition was no joke. A lot of the drivers I lined up against went on to careers in NASCAR and IndyCar. Same grids, same tracks, same era as guys like Scott Speed, Charlie Kimball, and Gustavo Menezes. Same pipeline that produced Joey Logano, Kyle Larson, and Alexander Rossi.

You figure out pretty quickly whether you belong.

Learning how to actually race

I worked closely with a full-time mechanic the whole time. Kart setup, tire pressures, gearing, carb tuning, race strategy, corner-by-corner feedback. He'd make a change, I'd run five laps, we'd talk through what the kart was doing. Then change it again.

That loop (drive, feel, describe, adjust, drive again) is where I learned how to turn on-track behavior into something actionable. It's a skill that carried into everything I've done since.

Karting also taught me the stuff you can't really learn in school:

• How to compete hard without racing dirty.
• How to manage your nerves on a pre-grid when the visor goes down.
• How to take full responsibility for every result, because the kart didn't do it, you did.

Valencia

In 2004, when I was 15, I got selected as one of 20 nationally ranked US karters invited to Valencia, Spain, to earn my Formula BMW racing license.

That was the moment the whole plan clicked. Karting got me noticed. Valencia got me in a real open-wheel car. From there, the path forward was Formula BMW USA.

Those five years in karting weren't just a stepping stone. They were the foundation. Everything I learned about competition, feedback loops, preparation, and just putting in the reps (it all started in those karts).