ELKHART LAKE, Wis. – After making his Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda debut earlier this year at Barber Motorsports Park and then racing at the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway last month, rookie Darren Keane is set to race on yet another historic venue this weekend as he travels to Road America for his third USF2000 event of the year.
Driving the No. 36 entry for Newman Wachs Racing, Keane looks to build on those experiences with another positive outing at Road America.
Though Keane has never raced at the four-mile road course, he has been learning the track on iRacing as well as at the GPX Driver Development Lab in Miami. He spent time there with his driver coach Ozz Negri, who knows Road America quite well having raced in both open-wheel and sports car competition at the track.
“Racing in USF2000 has been really cool because I get to race at these incredible tracks that are new to me,” said Keane. “I’ve never been to Road America but from the work that I’ve done on the simulator, it looks like it will be really fun. My favorite sector of the track is the last one – Turn 10 all the way up through the start/finish line.”
While building on what he’s learned so far this year, Keane anticipates putting his lessons learned into action when it’s time to go racing for this weekend’s double-header.
“I'm going into the event hoping to finish among the top-eight in each race,” said Keane. “Every session I spend out on track, I keep improving so I think it is a realistic goal for me. I'm hoping that we can hit the ground running faster than the race before like we did in the transition from Barber to Indianapolis. I'm really looking forward to racing on this track because the draft is going to keep everyone very close, which creates even more competition.”
After facing some trouble in Race 1 at Indianapolis, Keane rebounded in Race 2. Keane had qualified ninth but in a frantic start two cars got together ahead of him and he was forced to take avoidance. Though able to keep going, Keane lost valuable track position. But his racing maturity showed behind the wheel as he was able to make his way back up to 11th and finish just tenths shy of a top-10 result.
“So far the most important thing I've learned in the previous races is just to make sure I keep my nose clean,” offered Keane. “In Indy I made a mistake in Race 1 and damaged the front wing, which threw what would have been a solid finish out of the window. Fortunately the second race went a lot better! At Road America I'm going to focus on being aggressive, but making calculated moves.”
Keane’s time spent on the simulator at Road America will be all the more beneficial for the young racer as the tight schedule consists of just one practice session ahead of qualifying. Race 1 is set to go green at 11:45 AM Central Time (12:45 PM ET) on Friday with Race 2 set to begin Saturday at 1:10 PM CT (2:10 PM ET).