USF Juniors rookie Liam Loiacono sits second in the drivers’ standings and is the biggest challenger to longtime points leader Leonardo Escorpioni ahead of the season finale this weekend at Portland. Feeder Series caught up with the Australian to learn more about his first year in the United States and what it’s taken to fight for the title.

By Marco Albertini and Michael McClure

If you were identifying USF Juniors title protagonists two rounds into the entry-level open-wheel series’ 2025 season, you would be forgiven for omitting Liam Loiacono’s name from the list.

After all, the Jay Howard Driver Development rookie was only sixth in the drivers’ standings with 98 points and one podium. Not bad, certainly, but considering the consistency of the drivers ahead of him, the championship was slipping out of reach.

In the three rounds since, Loiacono has rewritten the script. With five victories in the last seven races, including three from three at Road America a fortnight ago, he heads into this weekend’s round at Portland just 14 points behind Leonardo Escorpioni. It’s hard to deny that Loiacono, at least with his present trajectory, carries the momentum in a championship battle that has rapidly changed complexion.

“I had some confidence I could win, but I didn’t expect it to be this dominant,” Loiacono tells Feeder Series in the paddock after completing his Road America sweep. “So it was really nice to get it this way, especially after struggling so much in the first part of the year.”

That Loiacono faced some difficulties early on could have been expected. A frontrunner in Formula Ford but an unproven quantity in North America, the Queenslander was always going to face an adjustment period. Five top-fives from six sessions at the series’ Mid-Ohio test in September, however, quashed concerns about raw speed.

“At the end of last year, we went testing at Mid-Ohio and we had some serious pace,” Loiacono explains. “We knew if we were going to do it with anyone, we’d do it with Jay [Howard]. So we signed early the year after and we began testing then.

“We thought we were pretty quick. We actually thought we’d have it quite easy this year, but it wasn’t. It didn’t turn out like that. It took a bit to get used to the car and the first round was a bit on and off. The results were a bit inconsistent.”

At the season opener at NOLA Motorsports Park in April, Loiacono grabbed a podium by finishing second from pole in race two, but he came home only sixth in the other two races. He finished no higher than that in Barber after qualifying sixth and ninth – lacklustre results by his admission. 

As the USF Juniors paddock held its first of two rounds at Mid-Ohio in early June, however, Loiacono’s pace quickly improved. He took fifth in race one before controlling the pace in wet conditions in race two to take his maiden series win.

With that result, he seemed to unlock a new level of pace and confidence. In the following round, Loiacono finished fourth in the first race and second on the road in the second race. Original race two winner Ty Fisher was then disqualified, and while Loiacono was arguably lucky to inherit the victory, he had put himself in position to capitalise.

“We’ve built some momentum in Mid-Ohio, which was nice,” the 17-year-old says. “We won in the wet after we struggled really bad at Barber. We had a horrid qualifying and then the races weren’t much better. It’s just recovering all those points for the next couple of rounds.”

He didn’t need any rain or penalties to triumph at Road America. The 17-year-old scored 98 of the 99 points available by winning every race from pole, leading the most laps in all three races and taking the fastest lap in two of the three as he jumped to second in points.

“What made the difference this weekend was just adapting to the car,” Loiacono says. “I was struggling with the [corner] entries at every other round and then I spent a lot of time on the sim bringing that all back and what makes it fast in these cars. We spent a lot of time doing that.

“We were quick in testing, topped the second test session, third in the first, then first in practice, and first in qualifying by a solid margin, and then I knew I could just drive away with it.”

As Loiacono cruised to three victories from pole, each more assured than the last, his four closest rivals faltered in qualifying and never fully recovered. Fisher finished seventh, Oliver Wheldon qualified eighth and João Vergara rounded out the top 10. Points leader Escorpioni was 17th, 1.6849 seconds off pole, and was the only one to score top-five finishes in the races, rising to fourth, second and second.

“Everyone’s just a bit desperate,” Loiacono says. “This part of the year, everyone’s trying to get really good results and they’re just not using their head as well as they should be.

“I was in a championship position last year and this is where I struggled at this point of the year. knew you just got to qualify well. You’ve just got to get up the front and I knew I could do it off pushing my own air while everyone needed a bit of slipstream to do the lap. We came away six tenths clear, so it was quite an easy session for us, really.”

When Loiacono speaks of his prior struggles, he alludes to his 2024 Australian Formula Ford campaign with Brett Francis Racing, which he ended fourth in the standings. In that championship too, he was the highest scorer in the final four rounds after a turbulent opening to the season. Though three wins at Morgan Park kickstarted his title charge there, challenging rounds at Symmons Plains and Sandown afterwards left him playing perpetual catch-up to the likes of eventual champion Eddie Beswick.

“I thought, last year, whoever had the most wins at the end of the year came away with the championship, but really, it’s whoever’s got the most consistent results,” he says. “Whoever’s finishing the most races is the one that comes away with the championship. So I applied that to this year after really messing it up last year, and it’s awesome to finally get hold of that.”

Loiacono cut his teeth in Formula Ford, making his single-seater debut in the category at 14 in 2022 after riding dirt bikes rather than karts previously. The son of two racing drivers – his father, Paul Loiacono, raced production touring cars in Australia, while his mother Cath Loiacono made several appearances of her own, often as Paul’s co-driver – Liam was immersed in paddock life from an early age.

“I was always walking around the paddock at Bathurst, just being a little kid, rolling in the tyres and all that stuff, but I didn’t have much of an interest in it until I was 14,” he says. “I was going to ride motocross or have a look at that, but that never came about. Mum wasn’’t quite keen on that. So when the opportunity came around, we opted for Formula Ford and we were immediately very quick.”

His older brother, Oliver Loiacono, had already been racing in Formula Ford; the pair finished first and second in the 2023 Queensland Formula Ford standings and even raced together in the Bathurst 6 Hours last year in the family team’s Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X RS, in which Liam says Oliver outperformed him.

But while 18-year-old Oliver has scaled back his single-seater involvement – “he wasn’t quite taking it as seriously as I was,” Liam admits – his younger brother has only ramped up his commitment.

In the winter of 2025, Liam left the Sunshine Coast for Indianapolis to pursue his goal of competing in IndyCar. In joining the USF Pro Championships ladder, he found an opportunity to advance towards a professional racing seat – a commodity that, he explains, is hard to come by in his native land.

“At the end of the day, Australia has V8 Supercars and very few drivers are paid. It’s not a very smart career choice, I don’t think. You have to be an exceptional driver and you need an exceptional amount of money to get there. We don’t have the scholarship series over in Australia,” Loiacono says. 

“The scholarship series, being able to win your way up to the top, is really what drew us here, so we’re just trying really hard to make that happen so we can go racing next year.”

Some of Loiacono’s compatriots have made similar moves. Beswick now races in USF2000, as does Brad Majman, who joined JHDD after a season in the Ligier JS F4 Series. But few drivers exemplify the merits of the scholarship system better than Lochie Hughes, currently third in Indy NXT as a rookie and now believed to be in the frame for an IndyCar seat.

Hughes was a talented F4 racer back home in Australia, but the COVID-19 pandemic halted his progression. Desperate for a new opportunity, he looked to the United States and linked up with JHDD for a campaign in F4 US in 2022. Despite a two-year hiatus from competition, Hughes won on debut, ran up front all year and claimed the title at season’s end with six wins from 18 races.

Rather than put organiser Parella Motorsports Holdings’ $215,000 scholarship towards a seat in FRegional Americas, Hughes moved to the IndyCar-supporting USF2000 series for 2023. He finished third that year as the series’ top rookie before graduating to USF Pro 2000 and winning the title with Turn 3 Motorsport, again as a rookie. The $681,500 scholarship he earned upon winning covered a significant portion of his 2025 Andretti Global Indy NXT seat.

“I know Lochie. I met him at the Indy 500 this year, and he’s a pretty cool guy, a lot like me,” Loiacono says. “He just doesn’t see much in Australian motorsport, so there’s no other opportunity. And IndyCar is the coolest sport there is, so it’s all about trying to make a career in that.”

Last year, Hughes earned the USF Pro 2000 title and the associated prize purse in the first race of two at Portland International Raceway. This weekend, Loiacono can draw another parallel with his countryman by taking the USF Juniors title and the series’ $249,675 scholarship to move up to USF2000.

In order to do so, he has to translate his pace from Road America, the series’ longest track, to Portland, its shortest. He’s not fazed by the task.

“I think we’re going to be just as strong in Portland as we are here,” Loiacono explains. “There’s no reason we’re not going to be. Around here, we’ve managed to pull away at a track that’s all tow. So at the end of the day – I don’t want to jinx it, but I think we could be quite strong there. Hopefully we have the same run we did here and just have some bad luck for Escorpioni a bit. The title is quite close at the moment, but it’s still a little bit away.”

Earlier this year, the JHDD driver making headlines was also called Liam – namely Liam McNeilly of England, who won the first five USF2000 races before visa problems prevented him from continuing his campaign in the United States.

Having now stolen the spotlight within the JHDD ranks, Loiacono is already eyeing the step up to that next level as he seeks another challenge.

“Nothing’s set in stone at the moment, but we’re working really hard to make it happen,” he says. “If we can either get the funding or win the scholarship to USF2000, that’s absolutely what we’ll do.”

Header photo credit: Gavin Baker Photography