KELLETT SAYS TWO YEARS IN INDY LIGHTS WILL PREPARE HIM FOR INDY CARS
Dalton Kellett of Stouffville, Ont., experienced a thrill of a lifetime earlier this year when he scored a podium finish at the world centre of auto racing, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The 22-year-old driver for Andretti Autosport finished third in the Freedom 100 Indy Lights race, which was held two days in advance of this year’s 100th Indianapolis 500.
“It was definitely the highlight of my career, to this point,” said the recent graduate of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
Now, he has his sights set on improving on that finish at this weekend’s two Indy Lights Series races.
Kellett is a well-educated young man who has no plans to pack in his racing career any time soon, but is also realistic enough to know that it can be a tough struggle to make it to the top rung of the auto racing ladder. Aware that it’s probably wise to have something to fall back on, he has a degree in engineering physics.
Before that, he was a student at the Toronto French School — he started in Grade 1 and went all the way through high school there — and plans to take his race car over to the Bayview and Lawrence Aves. campus for a visit while he’s in town.
He’s also a bit of a late bloomer, in that most young race drivers who get as far as Indy Lights started years earlier than Kellett, who didn’t go karting till he was 14 years old. He started off with a bang, though, earning rookie of the year honours at the Toronto Kart Club. He had success in the Ontario Formula Ford Series
before starting his climb up the Road to Indy ladder in the USF2000 Series in 2012.
Since then, he’s raced two seasons in Pro Mazda before starting his Indy Lights career.
“I think a second year in Indy Lights (in 2017) will be the right thing to do before, hopefully, moving on the Indy cars,” he said.
Kellett has spent some time with Dr. Jacques Dallaire of Montreal, who is a specialist in sports performance
medicine (one of his books, Performance Thinking: Mental Skills for the
Competitive World ... and for Life! was a bestseller) and has talked to another Canadian, IndyCar Series veteran James Hinchcliffe, about racing and strategy — something that Hinchcliffe welcomes.
“I want any of the young Canadian guys to know that I’m there for them,” he said. “I don’t want to force myself on anybody, but I want them to know that if they have questions, come ask. I didn’t have that. I just wished I’d known someone a little bit better so I could have avoided making some mistakes.
“Ron Fellows was obviously a huge part of a lot of drivers’ lives because of his karting series, but, in general terms, he gave me some good advice, but it wasn’t open-wheel specific. I just didn’t have a guy to bounce ideas off. I work out at the same gym as Dalton and see him quite regularly.”
Garett Grist of Grimsby, Ont., will also be driving in the Indy Lights races this weekend. A 10-year karting star who moved into open-wheel cars with the Ontario Formula Ford series, Grist has raced in USF2000, the Pro Mazda Series (where he won five races over two seasons) and now Indy Lights. The 21-year-old took a look at the NASCAR truck series but decided formula cars were his future.
Zachary Claman DeMelo of Montreal is Canada’s third full-time Indy Lights driver, and the question has to be asked: Zachary Who?
He’s 17, from Montreal, and you haven’t heard of him — probably — because he’s spent his entire car racing career in Europe. Those who have seen him, though, contend that he will wind up being Canada’s next Paul Tracy. Introduced to racing at a birthday party, he promptly won four Eastern Canadian Karting Championships and three national championships. After going to Europe, he ran Formula Renault and entered eight British F-3 races at the end of last year and won them all. He’s one to watch.
Scott Hargrove of Vancouver has his fingers crossed that financial backing will come through for him to contest the Indy Lights races on Saturday and Sunday. Hargrove was a champion Canadian karter and then won the Skip Barber Racing School summer series in 2011. In 2013, he won the USF2000 championship and followed that up the next year by winning the IMSA Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada. Last year, he was third in the Porsche series. He also had a great finish in the Freedom 100 at Indianapolis, arriving home fifth. He considers the Honda Indy Toronto to be a “home” race and wants very much to participate. It’s expected, however, that he will be racing in the Porsche GT3 Cup.
Daniel Morad of Toronto is a classic example of how being in the right place at the wrong time can put a crimp in a guy’s career plans. Morad won the old Formula BMW-USA (or Americas) championship the year after Canadian Robert Wickens of Guelph, Ont., won it. There are some who considered Morad better than Wickens and looked for great things for him. The champion’s prize was a year’s backing by Red Bull energy drinks for a season of racing in a European series on the road to Formula One. They didn’t give the prize to Morad for two reasons: he was the second consecutive Canadian to win the F-BMW title (and that would
never do) and, frankly, we don’t have a particularly big population and don’t drink all that much Red Bull. Morad took a rest from racing but is back with a vengeance and will be one to watch in the GT3 Cup races at the weekend.
Parker Thompson of Red Deer,
Alta., is racing in the USF2000 Series, the bottom rung of the Mazda Road to Indy ladder program.
In 2012, he was third in the world at a karting competition in Portugal and moved to Italy the following year to gain European experience.
Last year, he finished fifth in the F2000 series. This season, he has his eye on the title.