Years from now, Callum Ilott just might be hailed as IndyCar’s pied piper. Fresh from a breakout season with the upstart Juncos Hollinger Racing team, the 23-year-old Englishman could be the agent of change that leads some of the world’s best drivers — those stuck on the fringes of Formula One — to reconsider their final destination in the sport.
Prior to his rookie IndyCar campaign, Ilott was on the same ugly path that leads to heartbreak for most drivers who believe life begins and ends with F1. In recent years, it’s been a brutal existence for the Ilotts of the world as racing’s most exclusive series has made it nearly impossible for its top young talent to graduate to F1.
A runner-up to current Haas F1 driver Mick Schumacher in the 2020 Formula 2 championship, Ilott was signed by Ferrari as its F1 test driver in 2021 and appointed as Alfa Romeo’s reserve driver. Both distinctions signal the vast skills and potential the legendary F1 team recognized within the native of Cambridge.
Despite the honor of his selection for the Ferrari Driver Academy, the lack of opportunities to take that talent and go racing in a reasonable timeframe from within a Scuderia Ferrari entry or other Ferrari-powered F1 teams led Ilott to a painful realization. Although he was given all of the coolest driving gear emblazoned with Ferrari’s Prancing Horse logo and would get to sample an F1 car a few times each year, Ilott was on the road to nowhere.
It’s a familiar story for scores of drivers who are worthy of racing in F1. Most in Ilott’s former situation choose to toil away, growing older while filling secondary roles as test, reserve and simulator drivers, clinging to a fading belief that they’re destined for race seats.
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Rather than sit and hope to someday compete in F1, just as F2 champion Nyck de Vries did by waiting a remarkable 1,015 days between winning the F2 title in 2019 and making his F1 race debut last month at Monza, Ilott refused to waste years of his life stuck in a dream that carried no guarantees of coming true.
That’s when he broke from the norm and pulled the ripcord on his lifelong pursuit of F1 and rerouted his future to Indianapolis.
“We’re born and bred to try and get to F1, at all costs,” Ilott told ESPN. “And it’s very difficult sometimes to…
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