Two-time 24 Hours of Le Mans class winner Nico Varrone is searching for a way to continue his open-wheel career and wants to do so in the series he’s dreamed of reaching since he was a child growing up in Argentina.
The 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship GTE title winner with Corvette Racing, who also won the LMP2 Pro-Am category in June at Le Mans, is doing what so many others have recently done in his situation. Like Colin Braun, Toby Sowery, and Hunter McElrea of late, the 23-year-old is trying to use his big results in sports cars as a springboard to find his way back to open-wheel.
A karting standout in his native Buenos Aires, Varrone headed to Europe to start his single-seater education as a teenager and won the Formula Renault V de V championship — the same series where Rinus VeeKay got his start — on debut. A move to British Formula 3 with the unheralded Hillspeed team and almost no budget in 2019 resulted in Varrone delivering a big win at Spa followed by a brief return in 2020 before his funding was depleted.
Opportunities eventually arose in GT competition, then LMP3, where he won at the Rolex 24 At Daytona in 2023, and more recently in LMP2 where he was victorious at Le Mans and was a rocket the next week at the Six Hours of The Glen, posting the fastest lap of the race in the LMP2 class.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1408]
“Since I was eight years old watching Scott Dixon and Helio Castroneves, my dream in motorsport is to drive in IndyCar,” Varrone told RACER. “I understood that in 2020 when my career was stuck, at some point, I had to race anyplace I could to continue developing myself, and this was endurance racing in Europe.
“My dad always told me, ‘If you start making excuses, we stop,’ because we never had the money to do testing or anything, drove at many small teams, and this became my mentality; I always have to be on pole, I always have to win. And this has worked and we have a lot of success in sports cars, and now we are talking about IndyCar with some teams to learn what is possible.”
Countryman Agustin Canapino, who transitioned to IndyCar with nothing beyond touring car experience, is proof of how far talent can take a driver who didn’t rise up through the top of the open-wheel ladder.
For Varrone, who names Dixon as his main racing hero and inspiration, raising a budget that would open the door to testing is the first step he’s pursuing with his manager. So far, they’ve been in contact with three IndyCar teams, and they hope to earn the chance to participate in a few races next year.
Former IndyCar team owner Elton Julian, whose DragonSpeed operation has been a global leader in LMP2 competition, was impressed by Varrone’s capabilities at Watkins Glen, where he starred in the team’s ORECA 07-Gibson entry.
“Over the last nine years, I’ve had some of the best IndyCar drivers fly in our LMP2 cars; Colton Herta, Pato O’Ward, and Felix Rosenqvist,” Julian said. “Everything we see on track in IndyCar with them directly translated to how they performed in the P2. In our eyes, Nico joined that small group of elite IndyCar driver’s pace when he ran in our car at Watkins Glen a few weeks ago. Young, fast, experienced, versatile and currently riding a wave. I’d have him in the car permanently if all these manufacturers weren’t haggling over him for Endurance racing. He needs to be seen in IndyCar.”
Varrone also knows that as an unknown within the American open-wheel scene, he’ll need to prove himself with a budget that would entice IndyCar entrants before getting a shot to drive.
“We are working on the sponsorship side, and we have some people that are really interested in investing if a good opportunity comes,” he said. “Starting with a test would be great because we have people interested to invest if it’s a good situation.”