HARTSDALE, N.Y. – Nicholas d’Orlando will make his USF2000 Championship series debut starting this weekend at Road America in Elhkart Lake, Wis.
Since his record-breaking year in 2021, claiming the Formula Race Promotions F1600 series championship, and moving up to Road To Indy’s first step earlier this year, d’Orlando proved to be ready to take another step up.
The 19-year-old will now compete against his older brother, Michael.
Earlier this season, d’Orlando began in the Road to Indy’s inaugural year of the USF Juniors series. After the first two weekend events, showing potential and promise, it was decided that he would move up to the USF2000 Championship in the new Tatuus USF-22 machine with the Mazda MZR 2-ltr engine in preparation for a planned full season campaign in 2023.
He will join forces with two-time F4 U.S. Championship winning power-house Velocity Racing Development (VRD), under the direction of chief-engineer and team owner, Dan Mitchell.
“It was a pleasure working with the DC Autosport with Cape Motorsports crew for the beginning of the USF Juniors season and it was a great learning experience.” said d’Orlando. “I’d like to thank Don Conner for his help and will definitely carry over the experience to the rest of my year. Now I’m pretty excited to have this opportunity to work with Dan [Mitchell] and the entire VRD team and am looking forward to getting started this weekend. We want to focus on learning, and to develop the skills I need to be competitive at this level, and to prepare to race a full season of USF2000 next year.”
The d’Orlando duo and Mitchell have joined forces before. Mitchell lead older brother, Michael, in a partial USF2000 season in 2018 with a very new team, Team Benik, and again in the latter half of 2019 to help Mitchell develop Velocity Racing Development in it’s inaugural year, in a partial season of the F4 US Championship.
“Nick is a very talented driver and I have had the opportunity to work with him in the past,” explained VRD Racing’s Dan Mitchell. “He has worked his way through the karting ranks and into open wheel with success along the way. I am confident that he will be up to speed quickly and will challenge for podium results as we roll through the season.”