AVONDALE, LA – Over the past few months, NOLA Motorsports Park, 11075 Nicolle Blvd., in Avondale, Louisiana has hosted multiple different programs aimed at developing the future stars of professional motorsports. These drivers evolve from backgrounds such as karting, simulator racing and club level racing programs such as NASA.
This recent run of events began in November 2016 when NOLA hosted Mazda Motorsports Road to 24 Shootout where Matt Cresci beat out seven other drivers for a $100,000 scholarship and seat in the 2017 Battery Tender Global Mazda MX-5 Cup presented by BFGoodrich Tires.
F4 is an entry level series aimed at moving drivers into open wheeled racing from other disciplines including karting, park reps said. In February, F4 hosted its first official test of the year at NOLA. This year will be the F4 United States Championship’s second season and many of the teams used NOLA to test out new drivers including Mathias Soler who won the 2016 Lucas Oil School of Racing Formula Race Series, which also visited NOLA in November of 2016, park reps said.
Among the F4 teams testing at NOLA was Jay Howard’s Motorsports Driver Development. Howard, who recently was announced as a driver for the 2017 Indy 500, considers NOLA a second home and bases his MDD karting program out of the NOLA Motorsports Park karting facility, park reps said. MDD hosts 12 sprint kart races a year (the next race is at NOLA is Saturday March 25) as well as traveling to other kart races around the country.
As far as kart race series go, one of – if not the biggest is Superkarts!USA (SKUSA), park reps said. SKUSA was loading into the NOLA kart paddock while you could still smell the rubber from the F4 test, they said. SKUSA was coming to NOLA for the first time ever and introducing the newest addition to their event lineup – The Winter Nationals.
In an interview with ekartingnews.com prior to the event, SKUSA owner Tom Kutscher said, “I’m personally excited to get to New Orleans. The track is awesome and I’m pretty pumped to hit some local restaurants as well. The city is vibrant and a destination spot, and that was one of our goals. We wanted to make the event fun for everyone in the family.”
NOLA Motorsports Park continually looks for new groups to come to New Orleans and is excited about the growth of the park and continued partnerships with these events, park reps said.
