Tymek Kucharczyk did something unusual to prepare for his Indy NXT oval debut at Gateway this weekend: joining TJ Speed Motorsports in USF Pro 2000 for one race to compete in the Freedom 90 at Indianapolis Raceway Park. Feeder Series caught up with the Polish driver shortly after his very first oval race to get his perspective on how it went.

By Vincent van der Hoek and Michael McClure

“After lap 15, I wanted it to end!”

The usually feisty, determined Tymek Kucharczyk faced an unorthodox strength test two weeks ago. In the course of his Euroformula Open title bid last year, a 15-lap race would be par for the course; he might have craved an early ending to guarantee victory from a comfortable lead. But these first 15 laps in USF Pro 2000’s Indianapolis Raceway Park contest were purely about physicality in a 90-lap race that offered drivers little reprieve.

Kucharczyk, an Indy NXT rookie, has competed in single-seaters since 2022, but never had he faced a race like this one. IRP is an oval, 1.104 kilometres in length, that takes roughly 20 seconds to lap in a USF Pro 2000 car. That’s five times as short as a lap at Monza, where Kucharczyk ultimately won the 2025 Euroformula Open title, but with none of the braking points or long straights. The almost dizzying pattern of lifting, turning left and pushing the gas again means that without a caution period, drivers can never quite slow down and reset.

Ovals are a cornerstone of American open-wheel racing, so those in the shoes of Kucharczyk need all the time they can get to acclimatise. And that’s precisely why the 20-year-old soldiered on for 75 more laps to finish third in a car he may never need to race again.

“Even though I wasn’t very quick during the race, it just taught me a lot. And without looking at telemetry and data, video, I kind of know why,” Kucharczyk told Feeder Series in the paddock afterwards.

Not very quick might be underselling his own performance. Kucharczyk ended the Freedom 90, his very first oval and first USF Pro 2000 race, third of 18 cars still running, 3.0919 seconds behind race winner Michael Costello and ahead of both teammates. By all accounts, especially with such little preparation, it was a laudable achievement, well in line with the pace and remarkable consistency he has shown elsewhere in 2026. 

Kucharczyk is an Indy NXT driver for most of the year, and one of the most impressive ones currently at that. In seven races, the Pole has been the only driver of Indy NXT’s 24-strong grid to have finished every race in the top five this season, extending that streak with his fifth podium last weekend in Detroit. On the back of his strong start to 2026, the HMD Motorsports driver currently sits in third position in the Indy NXT championship, eight points behind championship leader Enzo Fittipaldi and just one behind second-placed Nikita Johnson.

With such a stellar record in his maiden season, Kucharczyk has scant reason to go any lower on the ladder. This coming weekend at Gateway Motorsports Park, however, is the inaugural oval race of the Indy NXT calendar. For Kucharczyk, who said driving the ovals was like piloting ‘a completely different car’, getting more time to adapt was critical, and the Freedom 90 offered a rare opportunity to trial oval racing in anger.

The schedules had been known for months. The big date was rapidly approaching. So when did Kucharczyk’s Freedom 90 deal actually come together?

Kucharcyk giggled. “Last week!”

 “It was pretty much last call and we decided to have a go,” he added in our conversation an hour or so after the race. “Any seat time you can get is valuable … even though we’re not racing here with Indy NXT. Oval racing is just so specific. It requires such a different skill set. There was no way that I wouldn’t be able to take away something from this.” 

A key force in finalising Kucharczyk’s oval debut was his HMD engineer, Tim Neff. The Australian is perhaps better known as the founder and owner of TJ Speed Motorsports, which has a partnership with HMD and a fleet of three USF Pro 2000 machines. Car number 28, occupied by Leandro Juncos at the season opener, was vacant for the IRP event, and once it became clear that nobody would fill it, Kucharczyk found a remarkable opportunity at his feet.

At IRP, Kucharczyk joined full-time TJ Speed drivers Thomas Schrage and Christian Cameron, both of whom have several years’ worth of experience in the Tatuus chassis as well as a prior oval outing at IRP under their belts. Relative to theirs, Kucharczyk’s learning curve was particularly steep. 

“It is very different. We don’t use brakes around here. The car is also quite tricky. It’s not an easy car to engineer as well, so it gave us a bit of a hassle during the weekend, but I was here to just learn, to help the team,” Kucharczyk said. “Thomas and Christian were really, really quick this weekend as well, so it was good to see I could also learn something from them. Overall, I couldn’t ask for more.”

Kucharczyk was anonymous in the first pre-event test but a promising second overall, behind Cameron, in the second test. In the compressed one-day main event, he led much of practice on the compressed, winding up fourth, and later impressively outqualified Schrage and Cameron en route to third place on the grid, one spot behind fellow oval debutant Leonardo Escorpioni. Even Kucharczyk himself seemed surprised by the result.

After all that, the race, of course, was the main novelty. Kucharczyk started strongly by holding off pressure from teammate Schrage. After the restart on lap 12, Brady Golan of Turn 3 Motorsports got past Schrage and ended up nearly glued to the gearbox of the TJ Speed car for 45 laps. The Pole held on to third place but saw the gap to first place increase to 7.7s by the time the second caution of the race came out. 

On the following restart on lap 63, Kucharczyk got a taste of how chaotic short-oval racing can be. Four lapped cars separated him from the two frontrunners, and his gap to Costello and Escorpioni ballooned by several seconds as he worked to clear them. Schrage, meanwhile, worked his way back to fourth and began hounding Kucharczyk for that final podium spot. The two TJ Speed drivers sparred and raced side by side, nearly touching with four laps to go, but the Pole clung on to third place, 0.4187s ahead of Schrage.

“The race was an interesting one. I thought I gave some very cool emotions because I was lacking a bit of pace, a little confidence,” Kucharczyk said. 

“I just tried to do everything to hold on to that podium. I think in my perspective, as an Indy NXT race winner, you obviously want to get a good result. But at the same time also, the drivers here are more motivated.”

Kucharczyk knew glory wasn’t really the end goal. For the likes of Escorpioni and eventual winner Costello, victory would come with a critical 45-point haul for their USF Pro 2000 title challenges. For Kucharczyk, however, any good result would have brought experience and lessons for his own championship attack in Indy NXT. To come away with third place as his team’s best finisher was just the cherry on top.

 “I knew the car would be good enough for me to fight for the good results, but at the same time, I’m totally green in ovals. Two days of Indy NXT is nothing,” he said. “It’s really cool and [the podium is] a nice bonus. It is obviously a big thank you as well to TJ Speed because that was the only gift I could give them for giving me a chance.”

Indy NXT will run the first oval race of the season this weekend at Gateway after having held tests at Nashville Superspeedway on 2 April and Gateway on 22 April. While Kucharczyk now has one oval race under his belt at the USF Pro 2000 level, it will be the first such outing for HMD teammates Enzo Fittipaldi and Jack Beeton, Juncos Hollinger Racing rookie Alexander Koreiba, and Cape Motorsports’ Matteo Nannini. 

Header photo credit: Gavin Baker Photography