{"id":6198,"date":"2022-05-21T21:26:41","date_gmt":"2022-05-21T21:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/?p=6198"},"modified":"2022-05-21T21:26:41","modified_gmt":"2022-05-21T21:26:41","slug":"andre-castro-the-year-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/?p=6198","title":{"rendered":"Andre Castro: The Year So Far"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK, N.Y.<\/strong> \u2013 It\u2019s been awhile since my last Team USA Scholarship blog, but I\u2019m back with some more updates on my journey thus far! Following a fruitful autumn of racing in England, my future as a young race car driver was uncertain, but after a winter of steadily sending emails and calls, all while studying at the University of Chicago, I landed in a situation I always dreamed of: a full-time ride on the Road to Indy.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The brand-new International Motorsport team.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve never completed a full season in any racing series before, but now I\u2019m set to do so thanks to the joint efforts of International Motorsport and Doug Mockett & Company. Juan Garavaglia, president of International Motorsport, believed I fit the vision for the future of his brand new team, and as such supported me to join his inaugural lineup. I also extended my relationship with Doug Mockett after working together for the Team USA program last year, and thanks to him I was able to complete the budget necessary to run a season in the USF Juniors Presented by Cooper Tires. Although this new championship is theoretically a step down from the USF2000 series I had intermittently participated in for a few years, the opportunity to run a full season is something I deeply value and have committed myself to excelling in. I believe it\u2019s the best opportunity I\u2019ve had yet to log solid results while learning all the way.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The team was able to get the car up to speed quickly.<\/p><\/div>\n

As a team, we collectively had no idea what to expect starting the year off at Ozarks International Raceway and Barber Motorsports Park. The first two rounds of our championship were separated by four days, meaning there was very little turnaround time. We started off our season with two fourth-place finishes at the Ozarks, a brand new sweeping, technical and extremely challenging circuit where there was no room for error. Many competitors suffered crashes, and some referred to it as an American mini-Nordschleife. Simply escaping the weekend without damage was an accomplishment for us, and we headed to Barber fifth in the championship amongst many more experienced teams.<\/p>\n

\"\"

A podium finish in just our second race weekend.<\/p><\/div>\n

We used lessons learned from our weekend in the Ozarks to come out of the box P1 in practice at Barber. We qualified in second place, a tenth and a half from the pole; this was a huge step up from how we had performed just five days prior. Our expectations were now to firmly stand on the podium, but we didn\u2019t achieve that in Race One, falling from P2 to fifth at the end. To be disappointed with a top-five was, in a way, comforting, as my tentative goal before the start of the season was to be consistent top-five contenders. Race Two went much better, as we tweaked on the car and challenged for the lead much of the race, ultimately finishing in second place to earn mine and the team\u2019s first ever Road to Indy podium. We head to the next round at VIRginia International Raceway third in the championship standings and looking to score our first win.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Pushing to the limit at Barber Motorsports Park.<\/p><\/div>\n

To come out of the gate with a truly new team and do this well early on was highly rewarding for myself and for the whole team. I\u2019ve been able to play a role in the development of our setup and communication skills, and I\u2019m learning how to be a team leader in ways that I wouldn\u2019t have been able to with a more established, multi-car team. Certainly, it can get frustrating to be beaten by teams and drivers with more testing and experience, but it only motivates me more and makes the successes that much sweeter. I\u2019ve been happy to reward the team\u2019s faith in me and honored by the trust they have in me. They\u2019ve worked diligently to fix issues and to identify solutions to problems that have arisen, and since we started so far behind, I believe we\u2019ll only continue to improve more than the other teams going forward.<\/p>\n

\"\"

It was so exciting to see F1 cars up close for the first time.<\/p><\/div>\n

Barber wrapped up the month of April, and as May approached, I was invited to attend the inaugural Miami Grand Prix with the Haas F1 Team. My exclusive entry into the F1 paddock was all thanks to Stuart Morrison, Haas\u2019 head of communications, with whom I kept in touch following my visit to the team\u2019s Banbury factory in England last fall. I was able to bring one guest, so I invited the co-founder of the Andre Castro Racing \u201cbrand,\u201d my former classmate at University of Chicago, Adit Damodaran. He helped me create a website, design business cards and reinvent my social media channels four years ago when I was ostensibly out of contact with the racing world. It was deeply gratifying to show him, an avid Alpha Tauri F1 fan, around the paddock which we had both previously only seen on TV.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Both Haas drivers couldn’t have been more friendly.<\/p><\/div>\n

The highlight of the weekend was undoubtedly getting to speak with team principal Guenther Steiner and the two drivers, Mick Schumacher and Kevin Magnussen, on Sunday morning before the race. I had video-chatted with Guenther at the Banbury factory, but this was my first time speaking with him in person. All of them were candid and open with us, which surprised me as from looking at the team\u2019s weekend schedule, I knew all of them were absolutely swamped with commitments. Their willingness to speak \u2013 and in Guenther\u2019s case, actively delaying his next appointment to finish speaking with us \u2013 was more than I could have wished for. I watched the Grand Prix from the hospitality area with Gene Haas and others, and although the race took an ugly turn for the team toward the end, I left the track as an even more staunch Haas fan than I was before.<\/p>\n

Since then, it\u2019s been full focus forward toward my next USF Juniors race at VIR the first week of June; I know I have to keep working hard in the gym and in the sim to maximize our potential. VIR is a gnarly course on iRacing, so I can\u2019t wait to tackle it in real life and see where we end up.
\nAndre<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK, N.Y. \u2013 It\u2019s been awhile since my last Team USA Scholarship blog, but I\u2019m back with some more updates on my journey thus far! Following a fruitful autumn of racing in England, my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6199,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[137,7,5],"tags":[105,53,110,179,144,177,66,178],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6198"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6198"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6206,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6198\/revisions\/6206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}