The 2023 USF Pro 2000 season was filled with historic firsts and incredible performances, highlighted by the crowning of Pabst Racing’s Myles Rowe as the first African American champion of an American open-wheel racing series.

As Rowe takes the scholarship and moves to Indy NXT for 2024, the field is filled this year with drivers who come from a wide array of backgrounds both within the states and from abroad chasing a championship.

 If 15 drivers being within a second of each other at NOLA Motorsports Park during the last test session proves one thing, it’s that the series will provide great and close racing when the drivers support the IndyCar Series next weekend in St. Petersburg.

The changes for the schedule involve the dropping of both the Circuit of the Americas and Sebring International Raceway in favor of adding a tripleheader at NOLA. While the NOLA round directly replaces Sebring, Road America and the Indianapolis Road Course have both been expanded to three races instead of two to account for the removal of CotA from the calendar and keep the schedule at 18 races.

Additionally, like other USF Pro Championships series, the tire supplier has switched to Continental Tire for the 2024 season. Drivers have said that the Continental Tire is much more difficult to heat up, leading to what could be interesting situations as drivers try to warm tires. Also, the prize package to move to Indy NXT that drivers receive for winning the title has increased in value to $681,500.

As of now, 18 drivers are announced to be competing for that prize.

Another one of the records broken during last season in USF Pro 2000 was when VRD Racing’s Nikita Johnson won at the Circuit of the Americas at the age of 15, becoming the first driver to win races at each of the three levels of the USF Pro Championships since USF Juniors started. Johnson will still be 15 when the season begins at St. Pete, is an undeniable talent and will also split time between racing in the United States and abroad while he races in the GB3 Championship in the United Kingdom. Johnson will have a chance to build on his second place finish in USF2000 next year as one of Pro 2000’s early title favorites.

Another team like VRD who has a strong history in the USF Juniors series is Exclusive Autosport, who will be pairing up once again with Braden Eves for the 2024 season. After winning the 2019 USF2000 championship, Eves raced both the 2020 and 2021 USF Pro 2000 seasons with Exclusive and finished runner-up in the championship in 2021 with three wins. Having won at least one race in each of his first three seasons, Eves is in a prime position to make another run at the title in 2024.

Frankie Mossman ran the last two rounds of the USF Pro 2000 season last year at both CotA and Portland International Raceway and scored a ninth-place finish in his debut. He is driving for Jay Howard Driver Development this year, the same team which also scored two podiums for last season in shortened F4 US races at Road America last spring. Mossman showed strong pace out of the gate at NOLA for official testing, running fourth in the opening session.

For DEForce Racing, Canadian Mac Clark continues to be one of the most exciting drivers heading through the ranks after incredible to his USF Pro 2000 career. At CotA, Clark secured podiums in both of his first two USF Pro 2000 races. Clark was the 2022 champion of USF Juniors and followed that up by having one of the highest average finishing positions in the second half of last year’s USF2000 season, riding that steady improvement to fifth in the championship. Additionally, Clark only got stronger as the time went along in NOLA last week where he finished off testing with a fifth-place finish in the final session.

After driving for multiple teams last season, Nicholas Monteiro moved to DEForce Racing in the offseason to take another shot at success in USF Pro 2000 in 2024. Monteiro competed in a full season last year and finished 19th in the championship with a best finish of 11th in both races at Toronto. Monteiro also secured a 10th place finish in the first NOLA testing session last week.

Closing out the DEForce lineup is returning driver Jorge Garciarce, who is competing in his first season of USF Pro 2000 after getting to compete in one round last season at CotA. Garciarce moved up after two seasons in USF2000. He improved greatly in this second campaign in 2023, securing eighth place in the championship. Garciarce had impressive finishes in the second races of both Toronto and Road America, where he finished fourth.

TJ Speed Motorsports is bringing a lineup of drivers to the championship this year who have already shown promise overseas. Coming off of a partial season in the FIA Formula 3 Championship, Hunter Yeany returns to race in America for the first time since completing a partial USF Pro 2000 season in 2021. Yeany is still only 18 and has gotten loads of experience at circuits all over the world since he won the Formula 4 United States title back in 2020. 

Joining Yeany at TJ Speed is David Morales, who competed last season in the GB3 Championship. Morales just missed out on the podium twice during the GB3 season when he picked up fourth-place finishes at both Zandvoort and Spa-Francorchamps. He also won a race at Highlands Motorsports Park in the 2023 Formula Regional Oceania Championship. Morales brings experience from all over the world and it will be interesting to see how he does in the United States after topping session four of NOLA testing.

One of the most surprising and exciting things to come out of NOLA testing was the dominant performance of BN Racing’s Nicolas Baptiste. Baptiste was flying both days of testing and finished in the top five in four of five sessions before finishing first in the final one. Baptiste did not race in 2023 but competed in 2022 in the Formula Regional European Championship where he secured a best finish of fifteenth during his final round at Mugello. We’ll see as the season approaches if Baptiste can keep up his impressive preseason pace.

Baptiste will be joined at BN Racing by one of the returning USF Pro 2000 race winners from last season, Ricardo Escotto. Escotto pulled off an impressive win at Indianapolis last season which helped him the championship to pull off a 13th place finish. He also had five top-10 finishes. Escotto showed strong pace at NOLA, finishing in the top three in both of the first two sessions.

Advancing to the USF Pro 2000 series on scholarship is Simon Sikes, the champion of the USF2000 series in 2023. Sikes showed the utmost consistency when he opened the season with an astonishing three wins and weight top-five finishes. Sikes will be racing yet again for Pabst Racing in the upcoming season when he makes his highly-anticipated USF Pro 2000 debut.

Joining Sikes at Pabst Racing is Christian Brooks, who has driven for a wide variety of teams throughout his career as he has continued to run into funding issues that have forced him into partial campaigns. One thing we do now for certain about Brooks is his undeniable speed. He qualified on pole, led the most laps and won the first race of the season at St. Pete last year. If given a full season, Brooks is as ready as anyone to make a run at the title.

The final piece of the Pabst Racing puzzle is Jace Denmark. Denmark did not get a win in his first season in USF Pro 2000 last year but was able to be consistent enough to finish seventh in the championship after getting three podiums, including a second-place finish at Mid-Ohio. The year prior, Denmark proved he could win in the USF Pro Championships when he won four races and was in the title fight until the end during the USF2000 season.

Turn 3 Motorsport has the largest lineup of any team this season with five drivers. Starting off with the latest in the team’s long history of finding Irish talent, Adam Fitzgerald joins the series after competing in both the Formula Regional Oceania Championship and in a partial season in the Formula Regional European Championship which was cut short due to an injury resulting from a crash at Spa. Fitzgerald finished strong in the final test session at NOLA last week when he finished third.

Joining Fitzgerald at Turn 3 is Danny Dyszelski, who is moving up from USF2000 after completing two seasons and earning a best finish in the standings of 13th in 2023. Dyszelski got to experience his first USF Pro 2000 races of 2023 in the very last round of the championship where he raced at Portland and had a best finish of ninth place in race 3. Additionally, he finished second last year in the Pro 1500 category of the Radical Cup. 

Also at Turn 3 this season is Tyke Durst, who ran a full season in 2023 in F4 US. Durst finished in the points at least once at every circuit the series raced at except one in the 2023 season and finished fifth in the second session of NOLA testing, showing how he has improved significantly since running the full open-wheel season last year.

The fourth driver who is racing at Turn 3 this upcoming season is Australian Lochie Hughes, who finished third place in the USF2000 standings last year after being in the title fight for most of the season. Hughes won the season opener and also took wins at Sebring, Indianapolis and Road America before finishing the season ahead of all of his teammates and only nine points behind second place. Hughes won the F4 US title in 2022 and continues to be on an upward trajectory.

The final driver that is currently announced to be driving for Turn 3 is Ethan Ho, who drove a partial season in USF2000 last season. Ho had a best finish of fifth in an impressive drive at Indianapolis which was the first race in a streak of five consecutive top-10 finishes during 2023. Ho also finished in the top 10 in two sessions at NOLA last weekend, showing his competitiveness against drivers at the next level.

The USF Pro 2000 season will kick off their season on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida on March 8.