Tag: HMD Motorsports

Caio Collet has been signed by the reigning and two-time Indy NXT champions at HMD Motorsports, which makes the Brazilian its 10th and final driver for its expansive NXT program.

The 21-year-old, who brings FIA Formula 3 and other junior open-wheel experience to IndyCar’s top training category, arrives at HMD with high expectations.

“It has been a long process to officially confirm Caio as an HMD Motorsports driver in 2024,” said team president Mike Maurini. “While he will also have the title of Reserve and Sim Driver for Nissan in Formula E, Caio’s main focus will be Indy NXT with us in 2024.”

After dedicating his racing education to European championships, Collet hopes the rerouting of his career to the U.S. will eventually lead to having another Brazilian driver in the big series.

“The NTT IndyCar Series is a goal of mine for the future but right now, I am 100% focused on Indy NXT with HMD Motorsports,” Collet said. “I have a lot to learn, and I am thankful for the opportunity. I will put my best foot forward at achieving race wins, podium results, and the championship for both HMD Motorsports and myself.”

Nolan Allaer is set to make an almighty leap from racing Formula Fords, the junior open-wheel class that has introduced thousands of karters to car racing, straight to Indy NXT with the defending series champions at HMD Motorsports.

The Michigan-born, Florida-bred Allaer has been busy racing in the U.S. and in England, keeping himself busy testing all manner of cars in the interim, and impressed HMD GM Mike Maurini to the point of signing him to conduct his rookie campaign in NXT.

“It’s a surreal experience for me to make the move to Indy NXT,” said Allaer, who captured two SCCA Runoffs National Championships last year. “The whole idea came from a phone call from a friend who said you should look at the United States ladder program. I reached out to Mike Maurini via direct message on Instagram and the rest is history. The team has been so welcoming and the knowledge and experience that they bring to the table will help fast-track my learning.”

Huge moves from the bottom of the open-wheel training ladder to NXT or IndyCar have been rare; the greatest attempt in recent history came with George Mack, a champion karter from Southern California, who completed the 2002 Indy Racing League season for 310 Racing — despite having no formula car or oval experience — and fared well throughout the wild one-year adventure.

“The jump from Formula 1600 to Indy NXT is big, but what most people don’t know is that Nolan was testing other vehicles as he prepared for Indy NXT,” Maurini said. “Despite the conditions at Sebring, Nolan learned a lot, and while two days of dry running would have been great to see where he stacked up, he was able to experience a lot of conditions and scenarios in just two days all while not running any new tires to better prepare himself for our upcoming Laguna Seca test.”

HMD Motorsports will maintain its focus next season on competing in the Indy NXT by Firestone series.

The reigning series champions, who guided Linus Lundqvist to the final title run under the Indy Lights moniker, more than doubled its capacity entering 2023 by expanding to nine full-time NXT entries while also expressing an interest in adding a future NTT IndyCar Series program to its offerings.

According to HMD’s general manager Mike Maurini, the Henry Malukas-owned operation will look nearly identical next year.

“I think eight to 10 cars will be where we end up,” Maurini told RACER.

From the seven NXT races held this season, HMD drivers have dominated with Danial Frost, Christian Rasmussen, Reece Gold, and Nolan Siegel accounting for five victories. Siegel and Rasmussen currently sit 1-2 at the halfway point of the championship while Gold and Frost remain in the conversation in sixth and seventh respectively, which suggests the year-to-year expansion has not come at the cost of competitiveness throughout the program.

“I think the growth has met expectations,” Maurini said. “Coming into the year and having to get up to speed on a new tire, having more drivers was better. We’ve had financial issues with a couple of drivers, but we’ve overcome that and instead of nine cars this past weekend, we only had eight.

“But there remains a lot of interest and activity for 2024, which started in April. The phone calls started earlier this year than we’ve had before, which I’m hoping is due to the success.”

A ninth car could be in motion at various points during the six remaining events and a 10^th is possible for the championship closer at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.

“I think the ninth car will be pulled from [the next event at] Iowa onwards, but there’s a potential at Laguna at the end of the year that we’ll run an additional car for an Indy Pro driver, or another driver that’s out of a European series,” Maurini said. “So there’s a chance that the last race of the season will have one or two more drivers. I don’t think we would do it before then. And I don’t think we will do it if we’re fighting another team for the championship; we’d likely shy away from causing any distractions.

“But there have been several drivers who reached about doing the last race because Nolan Siegel is a perfect example of someone who did it last year with us, left Laguna saying, ‘My neck sore, my arms are tired, I’ve got get stronger,’ used what he learned, came back to do the full season, and has run at the front.”

Maurini also says the timing isn’t right for HMD, which is building out a large new facility on the outskirts of Indianapolis, to expand beyond NXT in 2024.

“If anything happens on the IndyCar front, we’re more looking at 2025 or later,” he said. “Our shop is supposed to be done around Thanksgiving this year, so to put all the pieces in place in our current small facility is not possible. We don’t want to come in and run around the back. If we can come in and run with the midfield teams, that would be a win for us. And that would be the number one goal.

“We’re not going to go out there and compete immediately against Penske, McLaren, Ganassi, but hopefully in the long term, that will be the ultimate goal. There’s a lot of people that have interest in IndyCar, so it’s just a matter of if those people have the funding to go racing.”

If and when HMD is able to develop an in-house IndyCar program, it would have an internal pipeline to provide its stable of NXT drivers​​ a path to the big series. Sacrificing most of its NXT team to do so, however, is not on the cards.

“The Indy NXT program is the mothership,” Maurini said. “That’s our number one priority now. And we’re not going to dismantle a race-winning business to go try and make a run in at IndyCar. We don’t need to do it, but if we do it, we want to do it the right way.”​