Liam McNeilly began the 2025 USF2000 season in perfect form with a remarkable five victories from five races before visa issues cut short his title hopes. He spoke to Feeder Series following his GB3 cameo at Donington Park to tell us about his year so far.

By George Sanderson

There is a trend in modern single-seater racing in which promising European talents take their driving talents stateside. Rather than following the traditional routes through the FIA championships in their pursuit of the pinnacle of motorsport, young drivers head across the Atlantic in a bid to make a name for themselves.

“I think you see more and more each year, people heading over like I did,” says 19-year-old Liam McNeilly, who has spent the past two years competing in American championships. “Obviously, you had Dennis Hauger in Indy NXT this year, [2024 Indy NXT champion] Louis Foster as well. All these guys, they’re making a career in America so that’s the aim for me.”

Making such a huge change comes with its challenges. For McNeilly – from Essex in the southeast of England – that manifested as a flawless 2025 USF2000 season that came to an abrupt halt at border control. 

For two months, everything was going exactly as planned. McNeilly had started the year in USF2000 stateside with Jay Howard Driver Development (JHDD), who had guided him to second place in USF Juniors the year before, and kicked off his campaign in superlative form.

In the first round at St. Petersburg on the first weekend of March, he qualified second, five hundredths of a second behind polesitter Caleb Gafrarar of Pabst Racing. In race one, McNeilly claimed the lead at the start of lap four, getting a better restart than Gafrarar at the end of a safety car period and swooping around the outside of Turn 1 – a move he had initially attempted on the opening lap.

McNeilly went relatively unchallenged until the flag, maintaining the lead after two further safety car periods and crossing the line 0.5143 seconds clear of Jack Jeffers. Then having set the best second-fastest lap in qualifying, he started from pole for race two and led every lap to take victory by 2.7672s.

“The car was mega all weekend,” McNeilly told Feeder Series at the time. “It was good to adapt in free practice and qualifying. [It’s] a really nice track to drive.”

The second round of the season at NOLA was the definition of dominance. McNeilly topped every test, practice and qualifying session before going on to claim all three races victories at an average of 5.84 seconds clear of his nearest challenger.

“I didn’t expect to win all five races in the first few rounds,” he said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better start to the season.”

It was this near-perfect start to the season, in which McNeilly scored 163 points from a possible 165, that made the visa issues he faced in the buildup to the third round at Indianapolis Motor Speedway that bit more crushing.

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The United Kingdom is one of 42 countries on the United States of America’s list of visa-exempt nations. Under the Visa Waiver Program, travellers with UK citizenship can receive permission to fly to the US via an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) application, administered by the United States Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection agency.

In May, whilst attempting to travel back to America ahead of the Indianapolis road course round, McNeilly’s ESTA application was not approved, meaning he could not gain entry into the country. The federal government does not disclose reasons for ESTA denials.

McNeilly applied for a visa but faced a lengthy process. Nonimmigrant visa applicants have to complete the DS-160 form, pay an application fee and attend a personal interview at a US embassy or consulate. He was left in limbo, having to withdraw from the Indianapolis round on the first day of competition.

“I’ve got over it a little bit now, but it was tough,” McNeilly told Feeder Series. “I was heading back somewhere, and I’m not really too sure how, but it affected how I could get into America.”

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All hope was not lost, however. His opening rounds had been so dominant that even after missing the two races on the Indianapolis road course, he was only two points behind new championship leader Jeffers.

“We still thought that I could get out there for the second half of the season,” McNeilly said. “I’d built up such a big points lead that if I missed a round, it wasn’t going to be the end of the world. So I missed Indianapolis and was hoping to get back out for the oval, but unfortunately it just didn’t happen.”

As he missed race after race, it became clear that he would have to back out of his USF2000 campaign entirely. By Road America in June, the next round after the series’ sole oval round at Indianapolis Raceway Park, McNeilly’s return for later in the 2025 season was acknowledged to be all but impossible. He slipped to 14th in the standings at the end of the season as Jeffers won and took home the $405,050 scholarship to move up to USF Pro 2000.

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McNeilly’s final USF2000 race came on 13 April, and more than three months passed before McNeilly next took to the track in a competitive capacity. Continued visa problems restricted where the Briton could compete, so he saw an opportunity in neighbouring Canada, which has a separate electronic travel authorisation system.

When the USF Pro 2000 Championship – the parent series of USF2000 – took to the streets of Toronto from 18 to 20 July, McNeilly slotted into JHDD’s empty #6 car. It was his one chance to race on the USF ladder without encountering visa issues, and he grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

McNeilly was immediately on the pace, setting the third-quickest time in practice behind eventual champion Max Garcia and fellow GB3 cameo entrant Max Taylor. His strong start continued into qualifying, in which he claimed fifth and fourth in the two sessions respectively. He finished where he started in the two races.

“I think that sort of – not built my confidence back up, but it was just nice to get back out and see the team again because obviously I hadn’t seen them at all,” he told Feeder Series.

McNeilly had never raced in USF Pro 2000 before, nor against most of the drivers competing in the championship, but he was immediately competitive on his debut. There was a feeling of familiarity about his cameo too.

The previous year, towards the end of his full-time USF Juniors campaign, he made his USF2000 debut with JHDD in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, just three and a half months after his first races in USF Juniors.

McNeilly demonstrated quick adaptation to the new car, improving with every session. He was 1.0242 seconds off the pace of Garcia in practice, but by the first qualifying session, he had closed the gap to just three tenths before securing pole position by 0.1772 seconds in the second. Whilst race one ended in a retirement after he was ‘taken out’, he secured a debut podium in race two behind teammate Evagoras Papasavvas.

“It ultimately put me on the map a little bit going into the following year,” McNeilly said.

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McNeilly’s form in Toronto, paired with a second-place finish overall in USF Juniors, represented a successful introduction to American motorsport. Whilst Max Taylor won the drivers’ championship with a race to spare, McNeilly was already standing out as a leader among the growing crop of European drivers who have moved across the pond in an attempt to make a name for themselves.

McNeilly began his racing career after being introduced to the sport by his father, amateur racer Paul McNeilly. Having karted since he was ‘probably six [years old], hacking around in a bambino kart’, McNeilly branched out into European karting in his pre-teens before signing with Fox Motorsport, the team his father owns, for the 2020 Ginetta Junior Championship.

A tough debut season, in which McNeilly finished 16th in the drivers’ standings as an inexperienced 14-year-old, paved the way for a much-improved 2021. Five wins, eight further podiums and a total of 608 points took him to second in the championship, 45 points behind GT4 racer Aston Millar. For a lot of young drivers, the next step would be a move up the motorsport ladder for the following year – but not for McNeilly.

“We didn’t really know what to do at that point, whether it was to go [into] F4, because I was too young to go into GT5 or into GTs,” he told Feeder Series. “We were looking more at GT stuff, so we decided to just keep me in [Ginettas].”

McNeilly could not replicate his 2021 form in 2022 and ultimately finished third in the championship, more than 100 points adrift of the top two, in what he described as a ‘big character-building year’.

Despite a disappointing year in Ginettas, he had shown enough to earn a move to the next level, stepping up to GB4 for the 2023 season. McNeilly remained under his father’s guidance at Fox Motorsport, who themselves were making their first steps into single-seater racing.

Whilst the transition went smoothly as a whole, with McNeilly securing two victories and eight further podiums to end the season third, there were some teething issues. Across a three-round spell through May and June, he secured just one podium – a victory in the reverse-grid race at Donington Park – before rebounding with seven consecutive podiums leading up to the final race.

After one season in the GB4 Championship, McNeilly ultimately made the biggest choice in his career so far: leaving his family team and his home country.

“We were just looking into all different options, really,” he explained to Feeder Series. “I think the jump from GB4 to GB3 was pretty big, so it was more just look elsewhere, look for where the opportunities can come. America is really good for opportunities.”

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American junior motorsport has a ladder system like Europe’s, but the USF Pro Championships distinguish themselves by offering scholarships for the next rung of the ladder to the champions of each series. By joining JHDD in the USF Juniors championship, McNeilly entered the lowest series on the ladder system, giving himself the opportunity to earn as many as three scholarships if he won all three series over the years.

He fell five points short in his first season, even after winning all three races in the final round. But despite not earning the scholarship, McNeilly climbed up the ladder to the next category, having learned enough to put himself in prime position for a 2025 title assault in USF2000.

“We had some good results, some luck that didn’t go our way in the year, but it was a good first season to learn everything that I needed to learn,” McNeilly said.

Some of these lessons came off the track. The teenager opted not to move away from home but rather travel back and forth for the majority of the season.

“It was definitely tough at first with the constant travelling and different timezones. There were a couple of times where I stopped [in America]. Between Road America and Portland, I stayed with my friend in California and that was pretty cool. [We were] on the beach for a week and a bit!”

Indy NXT’s two most recent champions, Louis Foster and Dennis Hauger, both made the switch after spending several years on the European racing scene. McNeilly, who has done so much earlier in his career, said he owed his own success to a fellow Englishman: Howard, who made the switch 20 years before McNeilly did.

“Jay [Howard]’s really involved with the team. He does all the driver coaching, makes changes to the cars,” McNeilly told Feeder Series. “[It’s] much different to any other team in Europe. It’s completely different. I very much like the way Jay runs it all, how he is really actively involved with the team. I think that is really good and it has definitely helped me develop as a driver.”

Howard’s hands-on approach is informed by his long career in the United States. He won what is now USF2000 in 2005, breaking the win record of the late Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon with nine victories from 12 races, before taking the 2006 title in the Indy Pro Series, now Indy NXT.

A stable career in IndyCar, at least as a driver, never materialised for Howard, who was hired for his talent rather than his budget. Across five seasons from 2008 to 2018, he made 14 starts, mostly one-offs, and took a best finish of 13th.

Seeking to stay involved in motorsport outside the cockpit, Howard founded his driver development team, Jay Howard Driver Development, in 2012. Initially a karting program, the team expanded into single-seaters in 2017 to race in F4 US before joining the IndyCar ladder in 2019. When Howard moved his team from F4 US to USF Juniors for 2024, he found in McNeilly a veritable title challenger.

“He is one of those guys who has done it before. It’s nice to have him around, someone to talk to about it all. He’ll have gone through similar situations to me,” McNeilly said. “He’s helped me a lot with everything that has gone on this year so it would be nice to go back out there with him.”

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McNeilly returned to Europe for a cameo in the penultimate round of the 2025 GB3 Championship. Whilst Alex Ninovic’s title-crowning weekend may have stolen most of the headlines from Donington Park, McNeilly’s performances also caught the eye.

His first race in the series ended in retirement after he came together with former title rival Taylor. The pair tangled at Coppice as Taylor went for a closing gap, causing McNeilly to spin off into the gravel.

“It was no hard feelings,” he said. “When you go up the ladder [of motorsports in America], you keep racing the same people. Me and Max get on pretty well, [we’re] good friends off the track and then obviously we want to beat each other on the track.”

McNeilly started the final two races from third and second on the grid respectively and impressed in both. He crossed the line sixth in race two but, along with eventual champion Alex Ninovic, received a 10-second time penalty for jumping the start, which dropped him to 13th. 

“The lights were on for a considerable amount of time,” McNeilly recalled. “Alex [who started second] didn’t help me, but it’s also on me to make sure the lights go out.”

Whilst he admitted that he ‘might have been a little bit out of position’ given the wet-weather qualifying session, McNeilly made the most of his strong qualifying performance in race three. Starting from second, he was jumped on the start by Bart Harrison, who was also making his GB3 debut. Third became fourth on lap six, as Jack Sherwood overtook McNeilly on the safety car restart.

But McNeilly fought back, taking advantage of a mistake from Sherwood on the second safety car restart to claim the final spot on the podium. He admitted that the Tatuus MSV GB3-025 was ‘a lot harder for [him] to jump into and be fast out of the blocks’ as it wasn’t as loose to drive as the cars he had grown accustomed to racing stateside.

“The braking is a lot more different to what I’ve been used to in the past,” McNeilly said. “Just trying to wrap my head around that in the GB3 was tough, but I managed to get used to it over the weekend, essentially. It was good fun to drive the GB3, and hopefully I can drive it again soon.”

McNeilly’s visa issues have not been sorted out at the time of writing, but the 19-year-old said he was confident he ‘should be back out [to the States] for the end of the year’ – and beyond. He is hopeful of continuing the relationship with Jay Howard too.

“Next year, [the goal] is to try and go for the championship in Pro,” he told Feeder Series. “If all goes well, we’re back on the grid full-time and that’s the plan. Hopefully, we can keep going up the ladder and hopefully be in IndyCar in the near future.”

Additional reporting by Michael McClure

Header photo credit: Gavin Baker