Andre Castro made some big strides in  time for the third and fourth rounds of the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship last weekend, guiding the #19 Marotti/Legacy Autosport Tatuus USF-17 around the 1.8-mile 14-turn street course in downtown St. Petersburg, Fla., to secure a 10th-place finish in race 1 and eighth in race 2. 

“I think the team unloaded the truck with a great car from the very beginning, as the balance was always in a good window and we didn’t make huge changes," said Cstro. "It was mainly my own confidence I was working on through the weekend, as I worked up to speed slowly but surely. My driver coach, Alex Barron, was a tremendous help in analyzing my driving and pointing out areas in which I could improve, which was vital in us climbing the order and scoring two top-10s.

“I raced at St. Pete in USF2000 four years ago, in which I claimed one top-10 finish, but the rest of the weekend was miserable; I dealt with a flu and unfortunately crashed multiple times. Being older and being able to learn from that experience helped me to push the limits safely this weekend, and overall claim my best USF2000 result so far.

“Unfortunately, we haven’t confirmed Indy on our schedule yet, but if we go, I am truly excited to see what we have, as the team and I did well there in the 2018 Chris Griffis Memorial Test. I have hundreds of laps around there but have never raced, so I’m interested to see how we will fare. We also seem to have hit on a reliable and fast setup going forward which should allow us to climb up the grid even further than we already have.”

Legacy Autosport Team Owner Louis Michael Meyer said, “Andre showed what a great talent he is with the two top 10-finishes and the pace to be up front. With this program coming together extremely late and not being able to test we have made huge gains and I feel Andre can race for podiums at the Indy GP.

“Unfortunately, we were not able to run Simon Sikes at St. Pete due to an unforeseen delay with a few marketing partners but Will Marotti of Marotti Autosport is working tirelessly to make sure Simon and Andre are at Indy GP to showcase their talent.”

With Castro now confident of his fast car, it will be exciting to watch the addition of teammate Sikes to the mix as the two duel it out for the podium at the upcoming rounds 5, 6 and 7 at the Indianapolis Grand Prix Circuit, May 13-15.