Miami - The American dream continues for RP Motorsport. After its initial year with excellent results and two races won in the Indy Pro 2000 Championship Presented by Cooper Tires (formerly the Pro Mazda Championship), the team led by Fabio Pampado is ready to start a new season in the series, the second step on the ladder to the prestigious NTT IndyCar Series.
The Italian team begins the new year with their typical enthusiasm and ambition, preparing for a season that will take place over nine events for a total of sixteen races, scheduled on some of the most prestigious U.S. racetracks .
RP Motorsport will present a completely renewed line-up behind the wheel of the team’s two Tatuus PM-18s at the inaugural St. Petersburg round. Defending the colors of the Italian team for the 2019 season will be young American driver Kyle Kirkwood, the 20-year-old from Jupiter, Fla., back from a triumphant year that saw him prevail in the Cooper Tires USF 2000 Championship, the initial series of the Road To Indy Presented by Cooper Tires. In this highly-competitive series, Kyle won 12 races out of 14 and closed the championship with almost double the points compared to the first of his opponents – a result that convinced RP Motorsport to focus on the undoubted talent, and that will see him take the track in 2019 with the Mazda scholarship colors.
Joining Kirkwood will be a driver making a welcome return to RP Motorsport: Damiano Fioravanti, a 22-year-old from Rome, who returns to the team after previous experiences in Euroformula Open and World Series Formula V8 3.5. After the excellent results achieved last year in the International GT Open, the St. Petersburg round will be the prelude to a season that will see him at the start in a new context with covered wheels, in the European Le Mans Series in the category LMP3.
Fabio Pampado (Team Principal RP Motorsport): "We are very happy to be at the start for the second consecutive year in such a prestigious championship. We strongly believe in this project and we are convinced that, after a first season of adjustment, this year it will be possible to gather even greater satisfactions. We are at the start with a very determined team and two drivers who will be able to assert themselves: Kyle is a young talent who knows very well the American reality, having graduated champion last year in two competitive contexts like the USF2000 Championship and the F3 Americas Championship. We are happy at the same time to welcome Damiano back to our family, even if only for the round of St. Petersburg: for him this will represent a valuable training in view of a very challenging season that will see him at the start in the European Le Mans Series "
The team is currently on track at Homestead-Miami Speedway (Florida) for a double-day of collective testing, useful for drivers to become familiar with the characteristics of the car: then the inaugural round at St. Petersburg (9-11 March) will open a long season of competitions that will see RP Motorsport compete at several prestigious circuits such as Indianapolis, Road America, Toronto and Laguna Seca.