F1Weekly Podcast # 995
Play Podcast: 06-06-23f1weekly995.mp3
NASIR RETURNS FROM DETROIT WITH A FULL REPORTAGE. THE HOST BECOMES MORE REALISTIC ON NUMBER 33 FOR FERNANDO! WE HAVE A HEFTY MOTORSPORTS MONDIAL WITH TWO INTERVIEWS FROM MOTOWN…WE HAVE LOUIS FOSTER AND TALENTED GERMAN DRIVER LIRIM ZENDELLI
Former Formula 2 racer Lirim Zendeli will race in USF Pro 2000 this year with the debuting TJ Speed team.
The 23-year-old German had been evaluating several options for 2023, including Japan’s Formula 3-level Super Formula Lights series where he topped a group test last November in an outing organised by Monaco Increase Management.
Monaco Increase Management driver Lirim Zendeli, 23, took the best ouf of a difficult weekend in the USF Pro 2000 series on the Indianapolis road course, managing to climbi back to tenth place after being rammed at the start by another car. It was not an easy weekend for both Zendeli and TJ Speed Motorsports despite a good qualifying session where the German-Albanian driver backed by MIM had managed fifth best on a drying track.
The 2018 ADAC Formula 4 champion already has extensive experience of the tertiary level of single-seaters, which USFP2000 sits in underneath IndyCar and Indy Nxt in the USA, having contested two FIA F3 Championship seasons.
“I want to win, and I am confident that I can do that with [team boss] Tim Neff and his TJ Speed outfit,” said Zendeli.
“They have earned back-to-back driver and team championships [in Formula Regional Americas] and while I know USFP2000 is a new programme for them, their professionalism and approach to success are unmatched.”
Zendeli claimed one win and two poles during his time in F3, which began with him being a Sauber junior in 2019, and in F2 he scored four times in his incomplete rookie season two years ago. Last year he made singular outings in both series.
“Lirim has a bright future, and I am happy that we have him racing with us and not against us,” TJ Speed boss Tim Neff said.
“We now have a strong three-driver line-up, maybe the strongest trio of drivers on paper heading into the season. We need to do what we do right and capitalise, and we should be in the hunt come the end of the season.”
Although IP2000 was a step down from Euroformula, Foster still considers the Tatuus IP-22 an F3-level car and it had enough similarities to previous cars he had driven to not be too difficult to master, but “it was definitely a challenge getting used to the circuits and the teams, and the way they do things in America”. However it was “a challenge that I went into prepared and I was confident that we’d come out successful, which we have”.
Louis Foster:
Having finished second in Euroformula in 2021, the logical step for Foster this year was to step up to Formula 2. But his available budget, plus the fact he was going to university in the United States, led him to realising the Road to Indy would be his next move. In Autumn he tested with several teams, before deciding on joining Exclusive Autosport in IP2000.
“I did IP2000 because I didn’t have the budget to do Indy Lights this year. I needed to compete in IP2000 and win the scholarship money to compete in Indy Lights, and that’s what I’ve done,” Foster explains.
“Part of it also was a learning year. It would have been very much the deep end to throw me straight into Indy Lights with no prior knowledge of any of the circuits, or going straight into ovals in an Indy Lights car, which is 500hp and weighs 700kg. So it was definitely a good toe-in-the-water kind of thing just to get me used to American racing.”
The plan was to get the IP2000 box ticked in one year, which has happened, and Foster plans to do the same in the rebranded Indy Nxt championship in 2023 with Andretti Autosport.