PALMETTO, Fla. – A busy month of May for the USF Pro Championships Presented by Continental Tire open-wheel development ladder continues this week, May 8-10, as the top two rungs, USF Pro 2000 and USF2000, convene at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway Grand Prix road course for the VP Racing Grand Prix of Indianapolis.

As with last weekend’s exciting USF Juniors tripleheader at Barber Motorsports Park, the event once again will be held in conjunction with the NTT INDYCAR SERIES.

Qualifying for both series on Friday morning will assume critical importance. The sole session for USF Pro 2000 at 8:40 a.m. EDT will help form the starting grid for all three 25-lap races that will follow, while the earlier USF2000 qualifying period, set for 7:55 a.m., will determine the order for the pair of 15-lap races.

Intriguingly, the last five USF Pro 2000 races held on the 2.439-mile, 14-turn road course dating back to 2023 have been won by five different drivers representing five different teams.

Ricardo Escotto (Jay Howard Driver Development), Joel Granfors (Exclusive Autosport), Nikita Johnson (VRD Racing), Liam Sceats (TJ Speed Motorsports) and Simon Sikes (Pabst Racing) are the drivers and teams who have populated the top step of the podium over the course of the past two years.

Pabst Racing will certainly enter the weekend with high hopes as the Wisconsin-based operation currently leads in both the Team and Driver standings. Rookie Max Garcia, from Coconut Grove, Fla., has taken an early points advantage on the strength of two race wins and three second-place finishes from the opening five races. Garcia also enjoyed success at Indianapolis last year, winning one of the two USF2000 races en route to clinching the championship.

Garcia’s closest rival so far in the quest for a scholarship worth almost $600,000 to advance into INDY NXT for 2026 has been Alessandro de Tullio, from Miami, Fla. De Tullio has won three races to Garcia’s two, but he also failed to finish the second race at St. Petersburg, Fla., and thus trails by a 16-point margin as the protagonists head to Indianapolis.

De Tullio will head a strong five-car lineup for Turn 3 Motorsport. The organization based in Mundelein, Ill., has yet to win at the hallowed Speedway, although it guided Australian Lochie Hughes to the USF Pro 2000 championship one year ago – and team principal Peter Dempsey played a starring role in the oval track’s closest ever finish when he famously came from behind to edge out three other rivals in the 2013 Freedom 100 Indy Lights race.

In addition to regular teammates Tyke Durst, from Charlotte, N.C., and Cooper Becklin, from Portland, Ore., Turn 3 also will enter cars for Brazilian Nicolas Monteiro and Brady Golan, from Austin, Texas, who will make his USF Pro 2000 debut after competing previously in USF Juniors and USF2000

Additional contenders will include the Pabst Racing pair of Jacob Douglas, from Christchurch, New Zealand, and Michael Costello, from Naples, Fla., VRD Racing’s Max Taylor, from Hoboken, N.J., Israeli Ariel Elkin (TJ Speed Motorsports) and Canadian Mac Clark (Exclusive Autosport), all of whom have podium finishes to their names already this season.

After two hour-long test sessions and 30 minutes of official practice on Thursday, May 8, the lone qualifying session will precede the first of three races at 3:20 p.m. on Friday. Two more races will follow on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. and then at 2:20 p.m., immediately prior to the NTT INDYCAR SERIES headline event.

Liam McNeilly, from London, England, has dominated thus far in USF2000 Presented by Continental Tire, winning all five races and leading all but three of the 85 laps for Jay Howard Driver Development. If he wins the opening race at Indianapolis on Saturday, the recently turned 19-year-old Englishman will match the record set by 2020 champion Christian Rasmussen, who won the opening six races of the season. Rasmussen went on to win the title comfortably and now drives in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES for Ed Carpenter Racing.

McNeilly’s excellent start to his campaign has taken him into a commanding 51-point lead over Exclusive Autosport’s Jack Jeffers, from San Antonio, Texas, who finished second in each of the first three races.

Since then, the mantle of closest challenger has been grasped by Thomas Schrage, who bounced back from a difficult weekend in the opening event of the season at St. Petersburg, Fla., to claim a trio of podiums at NOLA Motorsports Park for VRD Racing. Schrage now lies third in the title-chase.

Other challengers likely will include Pabst Racing’s Caleb Gafrarar, from Charlotte, N.C., and G3 Argyros, from Newport Beach, Calif, plus Exclusive Autosport’s Evan Cooley, from Mokena, Ill., who made an impressive USF2000 debut one year ago at Indianapolis by claiming two pole positions, two fastest race laps and a best finish of third.

All eyes, however, will be on Simon Sikes, who is set to make a surprise return to the USF2000 ranks with Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing Development. Sikes, from Augusta, Ga., won at Indy in 2023 en route to winning the championship for Pabst Racing. He also finished fourth in his rookie season of USF Pro 2000 in 2024. Enter Sarah Fisher’s team, which has offered Sikes an opportunity to drive alongside South African rookie Wian Boshoff aboard a second SFHR Tatuus USF-22.

The USF2000 schedule is very similar to that for USF Pro 2000 with two test sessions and official practice on Thursday, followed by qualifying and the first of two races on Friday at 12:10 p.m. Race Two will see a green flag at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday.

Full coverage of both series, including timing and live streaming, can be found on the free USF Pro Championships App, YouTube channel and the respective series’ websites, usfpro2000.com and usf2000.com.