Written by Archie O’Reilly
It was never going to be easy. Hunter McElrea knew that all along.
Coming from a motorsport family - his father and grandfather having both raced - McElrea spent plenty of time at the race track as a child. That was where the passion was ignited.
But McElrea’s father Andy - a Formula Ford and Trans-Am champion in his native New Zealand in the 1990s - knew all too well how brutal the sport could be. And there was maybe a sense of him trying to protect his son by not forcing motorsport upon him at an early age.
But given race tracks were something of a second home to McElrea as a kid, it naturally became a big part of his life from young. His mind was set from the start - no matter the unsparing turbulence inevitable in the future.
“It wasn’t like [my dad] was being cruel but more from the sense that I don’t come from a rich family,” McElrea says. “It wasn’t something I was going to be blase about.
“I had to be do or die about wanting to do it before he even thought about me wanting to do it.”
McElrea was all-in though. And nobody was ever going to hold back this desire.
McElrea had a self-proclaimed regular childhood. As well as being engulfed in the motorsport scene at a young age, growing up Down Under meant rugby was a popular past-time.
From the age of nine or 10 until his early teenage years, McElrea played rugby at club level - more so than he drove a go-kart. As soon as school finished on a Friday, he would go to rugby training and would play matches against other clubs on weekends.
With his father having moved to the United States for work, McElrea was born in Los Angeles. But having moved to Australia before his second birthday, his childhood recollections all stem from living Down Under.
He carries a New Zealand passport and has always represented the country in racing given his family roots. It was in New Zealand that he first drove a race car too.
“That’s my weird background,” he says. “American-born New Zealander but sounds Australian. I get a lot of jokes about it.”
Rugby Union is the overwhelming national sport in New Zealand, with McElrea’s beloved All Blacks boasting a record three World Cup wins as the most successful team in the competition’s history. But there is also an underlying motorsport heritage.
For a country with a population of little over five million people - measly compared to even the 68 million of the United Kingdom or vast 345 million of the US - New Zealand punches drastically above its weight.
“New Zealand is literally the size of Colorado,” McElrea says. “If you just put it all in like a block the size of the country, it’s like Colorado. And it’s with way less people in Colorado.
“It’s insane. The per capita or the ratio of drivers is just crazy.”
In IndyCar, six-time champion and the greatest modern driver, Scott Dixon, is a trailblazer for New Zealand. Scott McLaughlin is one of the series’ best current drivers and one of the best worldwide. Marcus Armstrong was also a podium-sitter in 2024.
Looking wider, Liam Lawson is making waves early in his burgeoning Formula One career. Shane van Gisbergen is taking the NASCAR ladder by storm - winning on his Cup Series debut in 2023 - after making a McLaughlin-esque move from V8 Supercars.
Nick Cassidy and Mitch Evans form an all-Kiwi lineup in Formula E with Jaguar TCS Racing - both consistent championship contenders. Plus the likes of Brendon Hartley and Earl Bamber are among the world’s best in sports cars.
“It might be something to do with the mindset of New Zealand,” McElrea says. “You do a lot with a little and work really hard - not even drivers but most New Zealanders I know.
“Formula Ford I think is something that maybe all of us have done. And the New Zealand tracks are all super small and little quirky tracks. But I don’t think it’s that simple of just a certain track and a certain car.
“It’s mega that the amount of people flying the Kiwi flag high. Liam Lawson is probably the leader. It’s near impossible for someone to get to Formula One these days. And the fact that someone like him, who came from zero money and had the backing of a country, [did it] is super cool to see.”
If McElrea could pinpoint a moment where his attention switched to racing more than he played rugby, it would probably be as a 13-year-old. But he has a vivid memory of first driving a go-kart as a six-or-seven-year-old.
“I was thinking I was going 400 miles an hour,” he recalls. “I don’t even think I was flat. And I was like: ‘Wow, this is incredibly quick.’ I felt like I was in an F1 car. And it was terrible. I think it wasn’t even a proper track.”
It was a smaller track of a driver training centre owned by someone his family knew. And while the speed was likely only around 40 miles per hour, this was enough to blow an infant McElrea away.
It was not until around a year later that he drove on a ‘proper track’ for the first time.
“I held it flat on the straight and it was, for me being a seven-year-old, insanely fast,” he said. “And I remember thinking: ‘Man, I’m good.’
“I can’t remember which way the track went or anything like that. But I remember the feeling of holding it flat on the straight and thinking: ‘I have the whole racing thing sussed out.’”
It was from this seven-year-old point that becoming a race car driver was the overriding goal, as much as rugby and other sports were more accessible.
There was no clear picture of what a racing career would even look like. There was certainly no consideration of the tumult that it would be. But the thrill was overbearing.
“I was always like: ‘Yeah, I’m going to be a race car driver,’ literally my whole life,” McElrea says. “It was always something I’ve been determined to be since I was super young.
“You have periods where you maybe doubt, things get hard and things like that. You don’t know for sure. But I definitely had a pretty big desire since I was a kid.”
There is still a defined line between the fantasy of making racing a livelihood and the aspiration becoming something realistic and attainable. And it was not until McElrea was 19 years old that things became more certain.
After progressing through karting, McElrea spent from 2015 to 2018 competing in various Formula Ford championships Down Under. It was in 2018 that a real breakthrough came as he won 13 times in 21 races to win the Australian Formula Ford title.
“[It] was a really big deal for me,” McElrea says. “The situation for me, if I didn’t win that championship that year, it was like: ‘Well, I may as well not bother.’
“Because if I don’t win this, then I’m not going to win anything higher and there’s no point. That’s basically how my position was. And I won that championship in a pretty dominating way.”
This provided a launchpad to contest in the Mazda Road to Indy USF2000 $200,000 Scholarship Shootout, which set in motion a return to the US over 15 years in waiting.
McElrea actually made the decision that he would like to target the IndyCar ladder from quite early in his pursuit of a racing career.
“Everyone dreams of F1. And if they say that they didn’t, they’re lying,” he says. “But I always loved IndyCar and the Indy 500. And the scholarship programme was something that I thought was super special that nowhere else in the world was really offering.”
With Dixon a pioneer and inspiring for those from New Zealand, McElrea’s passion for IndyCar racing - and desire to follow the series - only grew over the years.
By the time he had turned 15, he had his sights set on the Road to Indy.
Winning the Australian Formula Ford championship was a key part of the masterplan, propelling McElrea to the Shootout. If he was successful, the scholarship would enable him to compete in the 2019 USF2000 season - three rungs beneath IndyCar on the ladder.
The event, hosted at the Bondurant Racing School in Arizona, saw 19 drivers from feeder series around the world compete for the prize. There was on-track competition in Formula Mazda cars as well as off-track assessments, including interviews, for judgement.
Fail to succeed and McElrea would be left with the prospect of his career - at least on the IndyCar ladder - falling to tatters at the outset.
But after being named in the final six of the battle for the scholarship, McElrea emerged victorious in a final test - a qualifying session and 30-minute simulated race. After two days, the $200,000 reward and USF2000 drive was his.
At the age of 19, there was finally clarity behind the reality of his lifelong ambition.
“If I didn’t win [the Shootout], I really don’t think I would be here,” he says. “I had tough times later on, but if I didn’t have that first year or so funded by the scholarship, I don’t think I would have had any momentum.
“It would have been so hard for me to do that year without that scholarship money. So that was a really special year. At that point you’re thinking: ‘Man, I’m going to be an IndyCar driver.’ You’re full of confidence and you’re winning everything.
“I had no idea of the tough times that were to come but it’s a part of the journey. That was probably the moment where I thought for real: ‘Wow, I might be able to do this.’”
The move back to the US was fairly seamless given, having been born Stateside, visas, gaining an American passport and many other logistics were not worries. The biggest culture shock was the harsher winters than Down Under.
Both from a racing and wider lifestyle perspective, there have been many perks to moving to the US and the Midwest region that dominates the IndyCar schedule. Everybody has been welcoming and McElrea’s Kiwi-Aussie accent is always a conversation-starter.
“Oh my God, where are you from?” McElrea is often asked.
“You almost feel like you’re limited edition or something, even to the point of where I’d go home and order a coffee or something and I’m like waiting for them to ask where I’m from. But then I realise: ‘Dude, I am where I’m from right now.’”
That friendliness extends to the paddocks at the track too - regarded as being more open and laid-back than found elsewhere. It is a contrast on track though, where there is much greater leniency when it comes to elbows-out, aggressive racing.
“[There is] a bit more leverage to race harder,” McElrea says. “You’re not allowed to block in a certain way - they’re very strict on that. But the wheel-to-wheel stuff, you basically can run a guy off the road in America, which is the crazy thing.
“If he’s on the outside, you can basically drive him into the hot dog stand and they don’t care. It’s kind of like outside suicide in IndyCar. You can drive really, really hard and old school.”
McElrea had a productive first year on the Road to Indy in USF2000. He was on the podium in the first four races and won for the first time in the sixth race of the season at Road America. He went on to win three more races, which all came in succession - first at Mid-Ohio then twice in Portland.
“The first year probably sums up my whole Road to Indy career,” he says. “We had an awesome year. I was leading the championship until the last race…”
But then disaster struck during the final weekend of the season at Laguna Seca.
Heading into the final race of the year, McElrea led the championship having finished off the podium only twice in 14 races. But a freak electronic sensor failure meant he had to start the final race of the season at the back of the field.
He recovered to seventh in a valiant drive but that was not enough. Five points was McElrea’s margin to champion Brandon Eves.
A mere five points.
“I lost the championship because of that,” McElrea says. “You never know for sure, but had I just been out to qualify, I’m sure we would have been at the front. It was a tough pill to swallow.”
Still, he did enough to move on and step up to Indy Pro 2000 - now named USF Pro 2000. But he was a rookie for a rookie team as Pabst Racing followed their 2019 USF2000 driver up to Pro 2000 as a rookie team themselves.
“The two years in Pro were honestly quite difficult,” McElrea says. “Pabst Racing, who I have nothing but amazing things to say about, are definitely a big reason why I was able to stay in the Road to Indy.
“Augie Paps, the team owner, is a guy I’m super close with and is an amazing guy. But we were a rookie team and rookie driver and it was a big learning curve.”
Teething problems factored in, McElrea’s first season in Pro 2000 was respectable. A pair of 15th-place results to kick the season off at Road America was tough, but that was followed by an eighth and a sixth at Mid-Ohio before podiums started to flow.
He finished second in the final race of a Mid-Ohio triple bill before picking up a first oval podium at Indianapolis Raceway Park as part of a run of five podiums in seven races. The season ended with victory on the streets of St. Petersburg and fifth in the championship.
The following year McElrea added three more wins to his Pro 2000 tally as he pushed for the title. But after winning again in St. Pete in the second race of the season, then picking up a third-place finish in the third race of that weekend, McElrea went on a barren run.
It was by no means a bad year - McElrea finished third in the standings in the end and finished inside the top 10 every race. But a run of eight races without a podium before five successive rostrum finishes, including two wins, in the final seven races meant he fell short.
“It was just a crazy up and down year,” McElrea says. “I had the most poles and we won races. We started off strong and we got into a bit of a tailspin in the middle of the year. We were basically at the back every weekend and didn’t know why.
“So the two years there were tough but definitely made me better and I wouldn’t have probably changed it because I still ended up getting the best opportunity.”
That opportunity was to drive for the famed Andretti team in Indy Lights - later rebranded to Indy NXT - in 2022. Again, McElrea had done enough to prove his worth despite falling short of a championship.
The start to his debut in Lights could not have been better as McElrea took pole by just shy of three-tenths of a second in St. Pete.
“Wow, okay, here we go,” he thought to himself at the time. But it was not to be that straightforward. The St. Pete race ended with an unforced error as McElrea struck the wall heading onto the main straight after confidently leading the early part of the race.
“I made a lot of rookie errors,” he says. “Just a lot of hard learning mistakes probably that I grew from.”
It still ended up being a positive year for McElrea on reflection. He ended the season with Rookie of the Year honours and was fourth in the standings - only 23 points off second place in the championship.
In the third round on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, he became a first-time podium-sitter. He went on to take five successive podiums in the mid-part of the season and stepped on the rostrum seven times in 14 races, including with two victories.
The first of the wins came at Mid-Ohio - confirming victories in all three Road to Indy series at favourite-track Mid-Ohio - and then Iowa Speedway, which was a first oval win. It was a good platform heading into a second season.
There were many times in McElrea’s past that a situation felt make-or-break. Just look back to the Formula Ford Australia title. Or a future hinging on success in the Shootout.
He managed to keep finding a way through the Road to Indy. But a sophomore season at Indy NXT level was truly crunch time.
“Okay, this is it. This is the year,” McElrea said to himself at the start of 2023. “Obviously everyone wants to win and there’s one winner. But for me, I was really sure that this was the year.
“And that was the year for me to get into IndyCar.”
But too many times, McElrea has felt he had ‘one of those years’. And by that, 2023 was still a successful season results wise, with six podium visits - twice on each step.
But McElrea went five races without a podium before finishing third at Road America - the only podium result in the first nine rounds. Five podiums, including two wins, in the final six races was an impressive flourish to end on a high.
But it was too little, too late.
Despite McElrea winning and finishing second to close out the season at Laguna Seca, the title went the way of Christian Rasmussen by a 65-point margin. And with that came an IndyCar drive at Ed Carpenter Racing for the Dane.
McElrea had to settle for second. And while finishing as vice-champion is an exceptional achievement, the turmoil that ensued made it feel anything but that.
“It was really like a champion or nothing year,” McElrea says. “It was just one of those years where nothing really went right. I had two wins, but for the speed we had, the potential we had, it wasn’t anywhere near what we were capable of.
“I don’t want to sound salty because there’s one winner and I’m so lucky to have been able to get through with the supporters and sponsors and investors I had. My family gave everything they had for me to do it and that was stressful too.
“It’s tough when your family are literally putting every cent they have and it’s not even a tenth of the budget. So I was so lucky just to get through.”
After all of the tireless work, it was gut-wrenching to again come so close yet feel so far. And by missing out on the title and scholarship, a dead-end was struck with one final step to make for McElrea to reach a goal almost a decade in waiting.
And not just that. His whole racing career was tossed into uncertainty.
“[It] was probably the toughest one to swallow,” McElrea says. “At the end of last year, I had nothing and there was a really stressful time because there were no IndyCar opportunities and I had no budget to do NXT again. It was a very tough spot to be in.”
September ticks past. Nothing.
October. Again, nothing.
McElrea’s father’s subtle warnings from during his childhood years are ringing loud. The brutality of the business is ringing true. At this point, the future is empty.
It was a harsh reminder of motorsport’s cruelty. After the sacrifices made to move to the US and the time and money dedicated by McElrea’s family and devoted partners, it brought a bittersweet taste to the end of an extremely successful junior career across all categories.
It was no longer even a case of chasing a full-time IndyCar drive - the perspective quickly shifted. McElrea was simply left craving one taste of the machinery.
“I did feel like I deserved it,” he says when asked whether he felt he could have made the move to IndyCar. “I felt like I could do the job. But I just wanted to get in one, whether that was a test or whatever.
“‘Okay, maybe didn’t win the championship for whatever reason last year. But let me show you what I can do in one,’ was my kind of attitude. And it was tough. The opportunity just never really came. And it wasn’t through lack of effort but I just had no chance to even show.
“That was really hard. There were two months where I had no idea what I was going to do.”
It was a low moment for McElrea. And maybe it was inevitable. Maybe he was warned. But when your life goal is within touching distance but agonisingly out of reach, it is hard to soften that blow.
“It’s so hard to stay positive,” McElrea says. “Racing is what I love so much and something I’ve dedicated my life to. Number one, I wanted to race and IndyCar was what my goal was and obviously still is. But the biggest fear was just that uncertainty.
“And it’s just so hard to be positive when you’re like: ‘Maybe I’m going to be on the couch all year.’”
McElrea had seen what Linus Lundqvist, who won the Lights title in 2022, had to endure the year after his championship success, sitting on the sidelines. But that was also a lesson in patience, with an opportunity materialising as a substitute for Meyer Shank Racing, which translated into a Chip Ganassi Racing drive for 2024.
“Man, I guess it’s a big possibility I’ll have nothing,” McElrea thought.
“And that was scary. So it’s hard. You can’t feel too sorry for yourself, but at the same time, it wasn’t easy.”
Time passed without anything concrete materialising for 2024. That was until McElrea received a text completely out of the blue one day.
“Do you want to go LMP2 racing?” it read.
“Yeah, I do,” McElrea responded. “I mean, I want to drive.”
The message came from Danish sports car supremo Mikkel Jensen, who was approaching McElrea about an opening as an Endurance Driver in the IMSA SportsCar Championship with TDS Racing.
To have been approached by Jensen, a factory Hypercar driver in the World Endurance Championship for Peugeot, was high praise. There was not a moment of hesitation.
“You want to stay race fit,” McElrea says. “And there was a golden opportunity presented to me. [IMSA was] something I never even really thought about doing; I’d love to have done it but I never thought I’d be doing it at this point. And it was something very, very new to me.”
With TDS alongside Jensen and highly-rated bronze driver Steven Thomas, McElrea landed immediately in one of the best seats in the field.
“That was a huge relief and probably one of the coolest moments to sign my first professional contract to drive,” McElrea says. “And yes, there was no IndyCar opportunity. But I was going to be racing this year.
“That was probably one of the best feelings I’ve had, even it not being IndyCar. There’s Daytona 24 Hour, Sebring 12 Hour, Petit Le Mans - these are all races that everyone wants to do.
“I always knew I wanted to do these races one day. The fact that I had the chance to do them this year, and especially the timing that I had zero driving anything, it was perfect.”
It took a little bit of time before McElrea was up to speed in the LMP2 car. He was far from being off the pace and was aligned with where the team wanted him fairly quickly, but he was yet to find absolute comfort.
McElrea’s debut and first Daytona 24 Hours experience was agonising. He was able to get valuable track time through The Roar - the pre-event testing week - but the team’s race came to a premature end before McElrea had even climbed aboard.
It was not until the second round - another marquee event, the Sebring 12 Hours - that McElrea was able to feel properly in a rhythm.
“Even all the testing and the practice, I still didn’t quite feel like I was where I needed to be,” McElrea says. “But when I did my first race scenario, it just all gelled and it felt awesome.
“You do so many laps in an endurance race - something that also was very new to me which is just crazy. At Sebring, I maybe did four Indy NXT races in one day - maybe more. So you’re getting so much track time and that’s when you really understand the car.”
It was a completely different discipline for McElrea to get to grips with, whether racing overnight with limited lighting, sharing a car or having to fight for position in class while navigating GTP and GTD traffic.
The constant frenzy of quicker and slower cars and higher and lower-rated drivers means there is no time to switch off. But drivers relish that feeling of having a battle to fight in every corner on every lap. It is unrelenting action.
Sebring ended up being a fantastic experience for McElrea in many ways.
A gutsy overtake for the class lead inside the final two hours, marginally splitting GTD traffic with the LMP2 car ahead, gained traction online. And he was able to pull away before the team eventually finished second in class.
“I had a really awesome debut,” McElrea says. “I was battling all these legends of sports car racing and other racing that I’ve known of since a kid.
“I was racing them and beating them.”
Not only did a podium mark a successful opening foray into IMSA on the vicious bumps of Sebring, there was also a liberating sensation to it all.
“This is awesome, man. I’m having the time of my life,” McElrea thought to himself.
“I had the most fun I’d ever had in a race. You never have one second to rest. It was a lot funner because you feel like you’re fighting for something. I enjoyed the hell out of that. You were always battling and you were never out of the fight.”
It was a different dynamic having teammates driving the same car too. McElrea has enjoyed a whole range of relationships with teammates in his single-seater days, but teammates in sportscar racing are a very different proposition.
In formula car racing, teammates are working to achieve the exact same prize but drivers want nothing more than to beat their teammates to that prize. But in sports car racing, you are all working together to achieve the exact same prize together.
In Jensen, McElrea had as a teammate a driver established at the top level and regarded as one of the best to ever drive an LMP2 car. He was a marker for McElrea to work towards and was not afraid to use a tough-love approach in McElrea’s development.
“He’ll tell me what he thinks,” McElrea says. “It’s not like he’ll take it easy on me. I’m there to do a job, which is why he chose me to be here. But he definitely helped me, my learning curve of adapting to endurance and sports cars.
“I think for sure the success I’ve had this year is a lot down to him just giving me such good data and such good lessons and his experience to lean on.”
On the flip side, every LMP2 team has its bronze - or ‘amateur’ - driver as part of their lineup. For TDS this was Thomas, who with his wife Emily helps to facilitate the programme.
The amateurs in a ‘pro-am’ lineup occasionally gain unjust reputations for being a little unserious. And there are instances of bronze-rated drivers helping to fund a programme then driving just for their own leisure.
But to Thomas, it is much more than that.
“[He is] probably one of the most dedicated dudes I’ve seen to his craft of racing,” McElrea says. “He tries so hard, he invests so much - not only on the financial side but he’s doing simulator laps like crazy, he’s studying footage.
“He’s always pushing away from the track to be the best driver he can be. Steven takes it so seriously that it makes me want to push to help him because you know he’s obviously giving it 110 percent.”
Now 57 years old, Thomas only made his debut in IMSA in 2021 and has only been racing for around five years. But he is already on the pace of - and able to beat on pure pace - Ben Keating, who is revered as possibly the best bronze driver in the world.
Driving only in the endurance rounds, McElrea’s next opportunity to pilot the car came at Watkins Glen for the six-hour race in June, where TDS finished ninth in class. This left the team four points from the lead of the Endurance Cup.
With two endurance rounds remaining, the chase was on. But first though, there was something more pressing on McElrea’s mind.
While he was flourishing and had found a home in sports cars, McElrea was not ready to give up on the IndyCar dream he had chased for so long. When he was not on track, he was working non-stop to try and gain even just the chance to test an Indy car.
“I had a lot of downtime between races and I would spend that flat-out trying to get an IndyCar drive,” McElrea says. “And I would have zero success with it. It just was impossible, it felt like.”
It always seemed to happen that glimmers of hope would emerge during the weeks that McElrea was occupied with his IMSA commitments.
He was at Sebring in March when his phone rang and on the other end of the line was a high-profile figure at an IndyCar team. That team wanted to determine McElrea’s availability for an upcoming test.
It was the opportunity he had been waiting for.
At the time, the team had an injured driver and was searching for a temporary replacement. The turnaround time was a matter of days but McElrea was not going to let the shot slip.
The second points-paying round of the IndyCar season was coming up soon after. McElrea knew, should all go according to plan in the proposed test, he could even have a shot at making his debut in a marquee event.
“Basically in my mind, it was almost that I was going to be racing - I was going to be testing and then racing Long Beach,” McElrea says. “And that was incredible.”
McElrea broke down into tears while golfing with sponsors - integral parts of his journey - as he broke the news.
“I’m going IndyCar racing,” he said to them. “And there was a period where that was my reality.”
Unfortunately for McElrea though, things ended up falling through. The team ended up selecting another driver, leaving him in an odd state. He had felt the unbridled jubilation of having ‘achieved’ what he was aiming for but the anguish of that being snatched away.
But it was not going to get him down. He had felt that infectious feeling and wanted more of it. There was no other option than to keep trying. And keep trying harder than ever.
“I had the emotion of thinking that I had made it to IndyCar,” he says. “So that was in some ways gutting and in some ways more motivation of how close I was.”
In the three-month period between Sebring and Watkins Glen, McElrea had no avail despite spending these “months and months and months trying” for an IndyCar opportunity. But as was the case in Sebring, as soon as McElrea got to the third of five planned IMSA weekends, his phone rang with IndyCar interest again.
“We have a test,” the voice said. “Are you interested?”
It was Dale Coyne on the other end of the line. And fittingly for McElrea, the proposal was for a test at his favourite and most successful track, Mid-Ohio.
It had been an uncertain season for Dale Coyne Racing - one that ended with nine different drivers having been fielded across its two cars.
But while this lack of continuity was far from ideal for a team unable to facilitate complete seasons for two drivers, it did open up golden opportunities for those such as McElrea to prove their worth to onlooking teams.
Even just the test was a landmark moment for McElrea. To have simply been driving an Indy car for the first time was a dream come true.
“I’d worked so hard to get the chance to drive one,” McElrea says. “I even felt like just getting my bum in one was a huge life achievement for me that I could tick off. ‘Okay, I drove an Indy car.’
“The test went so well and I felt really comfortable in it right away. It was everything I hoped for and more in terms of what the car felt like, how my performance went.
“And then the ball was rolling.”
The Mid-Ohio test came immediately after the IndyCar race weekend at the track, which signified the penultimate road course race of the season. Of the final eight races, six would be on ovals, leaving only Toronto and Mid-Ohio as options for McElrea to make a possible debut.
Unconfirmed at the time, Toby Sowery was always signed to be running Portland in the No.51 Honda for Coyne. And after impressing on debut at Mid-Ohio, there was quickly work on instigating a return in Toronto.
But the team still had things to confirm for IndyCar’s only trip to Canada. And when he stepped in for the test, McElrea knew it was not an outing just for the sake of it.
Initially, Nolan Siegel was supposed to run Toronto in the No.18 Honda as part of his rotation with Jack Harvey when there was no clash with his Indy NXT commitments. But Siegel’s mid-season IndyCar move to Arrow McLaren left two vacancies at Coyne for Toronto.
There was some thought that Harvey may just add another race to his programme - as he did at Long Beach as Siegel moved to the No.51 - and run alongside Sowery. But back pain that saw him miss the second race of the Iowa doubleheader left the No.18 vacant.
“I don’t even have a clue,” McElrea says, trying to make sense of the dominoes. But it didn’t matter to him: it opened the door for an IndyCar debut.
Making a first IndyCar appearance on a tight, bumpy street circuit was a baptism of fire. But McElrea was not going to do anything but jump into the challenge head-first.
“Probably the worst track to make a debut on is Toronto in terms of difficulty,” he says. “It’s literally the most brutal track probably on the calendar in terms of street track. It was a very, very hard ask to do but I had to take it.”
McElrea had backers who were unsure whether he should be making his debut on a track so punishing. And it was scary in prospect. But racing drivers are wired to embrace that.
“I worked my whole life for that moment,” McElrea says. “Sometimes you’ve just got to send it.
“And that’s what I did.”
Unlike the last-minute calls made by Coyne to drivers such as Tristan Vautier throughout the course of the year, McElrea recalls finding out he would be in the No.18 car a little over a week before taking to the track in Toronto.
There was some time to visit the team’s workshop and dig through some footage and data. He was going to leave no stone unturned. But the race weekend was quickly upon McElrea.
“This could be my only ever race,” he thought. “I don’t think that will be, but if it is, I’m going to have the most fun out of anyone.
“So that’s what I did.”
McElrea placed 18th in his first official session, quickly getting up to speed despite Toronto’s treacherous nature; with red flags aiding him somewhat, he topped the second of the two end-of-session half-field group sessions.
He improved again in second practice after another clean session, making up two spots to finish 16th on the time sheets and confirm his place as the quickest rookie in practice.
“I was shocked about how competitive we were,” he says. “Not that I didn’t believe in myself but I just had no expectation or a goal.
“So to show up and then be the fastest rookie in practice against guys who have been in it all year, just showing up at the hardest track in the middle of the year, I was really proud of myself.”
There was a hint of misfortune to the rest of the weekend for McElrea. He suffered with electrical issues through qualifying and ended the session in the tyre barriers, confining him to a 25th-place start.
It was a shame - McElrea had felt as though a Fast 12 appearance was not an impossibility - but starting at the rear, he could really show what he could do in the race.
“I kind of was just like: ‘Screw it, I’m just going to drive as hard as I can,’” McElrea says. “I probably pushed more than I would usually because I wanted to make the most of it. I approached that like it was going to be my last-ever opportunity.”
McElrea’s race started impressively. He was passing car after car and recalls having the same pace as race-leader Colton Herta at one stage. Unfortunately though, McElrea’s day was done after 57 laps after contact with the wall.
“I wanted to drive the absolute wheels off it as hard as I could,” McElrea says. “Maybe that was a part of my speed. But it’s so difficult because you have no room for error and you’re learning so many things on the go.
“You can’t go over the limit, under, over the limit, under like you would at a normal track. It’s over the limit, in the wall, done.”
But a DNF does not detract from the impression McElrea feels he made and the experience he had.
Driving out of the pits with Dixon - a hero at home - in front of him was surreal. At the same time, it was important not to get distracted and, as tough as it may be, try to treat this as normal.
“I didn’t feel out of my depth,” McElrea says. “I felt confident and good and it was great.”
To McElrea’s surprise, he also built a significant fanbase across his debut weekend. He was given gifts and came away with wrists full of bracelets after heading to Toronto not expecting anyone to even know who he was.
As he reflects back on the weekend three months on, there is no doubt in his mind that it was a success.
“It’s very fulfilling in the sense of achieving that on merit,” he says. “It was a mega, mega, mega opportunity. When I drove the Indy car, I’m like: ‘Man, I need this. I need this in my life.’
“It’s so fun and I just felt good. It felt right. So I’m super grateful for that opportunity. I feel like if you look at the weekend as a whole and what I achieved and what I showed and maybe a statement I made, I felt like I showed I belonged.
“I probably never would have driven an Indy car if that didn’t happen. Who knows what I go on to do? But maybe that could have been a huge catalyst for something that leads to me getting more opportunities.”
Still only in July, this was not yet the end of McElrea’s racing year. Two more marquee IMSA events remained - the first close to McElrea’s IndyCar roots at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, then the prestigious Petit Le Mans.
With conditions changeable, Indianapolis posed a major challenge. But through torrential rain, a drying track and day turning to night, McElrea and company stayed firmly in the game. And after Jensen seized the lead from Paul di Resta inside the final 40 minutes, TDS surged to victory by 26 seconds.
It was a first win in IMSA for McElrea. And heading into the finale at Road Atlanta, the team had jumped joint-top of the Endurance Cup standings. McElrea’s hunt for a first championship since 2018 was alive.
There was then only a three-week turnaround between Indianapolis and the prestigious Petit Le Mans. And there was a lot on the line for McElrea.
He had come so close to titles so many times since changing the course of his life by moving Stateside but time and time again had to endure the agony of falling just short. This was a golden opportunity to avenge some of those near misses.
After starting second in class, the TDS machine scarcely ran any lower than the top two throughout the whole 10 hours. McElrea spent time comfortably out front both day and night, with over a one-minute lead for Jensen before a final-hour caution was brandished.
But yet again, Jensen surged clear of the field on the restart to guide TDS to a win by over 17 seconds. And with that, McElrea was confirmed a champion for the first time in six years.
“Obviously coming so close to a lot of championships in my junior formula, to show up and win the endurance championship my first year and add a championship to my name for the first time in five years was awesome,” McElrea says.
“It really does mean a lot because it’s such a hard thing to do, winning a championship. I don’t care what championship it is. For us to win the endurance championship and Petit Le Mans, which is a race that everyone knows and everyone wants to win, was mega.”
Such has been the success and enjoyment, work is well underway for the same programme to be run with TDS in 2024.
“I for sure can’t take all of the credit because it’s a team effort,” McElrea says. “But I do really feel that I made a contribution this year. So that adaptation and the results we’ve got is something I’m really proud of.”
Looking ahead to the future, McElrea is intent on winning the big US endurance races should he indeed remain with TDS as planned.
“If I win the Daytona 24 Hour next year, that’s with me forever,” McElrea says. “Those are things that fire me up and motivate me a lot, to get that resume filled.”
Still, while McElrea is actively pursuing the sports car realm, IndyCar continues to play on his mind. He has been desperate just to get back in the car, which is set to happen in a test at the Thermal Club with Ed Carpenter Racing this month.
“IndyCar, man, especially after any taste of it, it’s going to be hard to forget,” he says.
“If I could paint a perfect scenario for myself, to be able to be in a full-time IndyCar seat and do the big endurance races in North America and Le Mans, for me that would be the absolute ultimate.”
For now, McElrea has no clarity on what his IndyCar involvement - if at all - could look like in 2025. He is in discussions with teams and maybe the upcoming test could be a launchpad. But a full-time gig is a long shot.
“I’ll never not pursue IndyCar and the chance to drive one because I really feel like I belong there and can perform well,” he says. “I’m just going to keep putting myself in the position I can to try and be there when something happens.
“I hope I get another shot. And hopefully when I do, I can make a big splash.”
Above anything else, if McElrea is going to live his dream of a career in racing - no matter where that may be - he is going to make sure the most important thing is having the time of his life in doing so.
Through the stresses of getting there has come a lesson that every minute of his career needs to be lived to the fullest now that he is in the position he has worked his whole life to reach.
“I want to race as much as I can and win as much as I can and have the most fun I can. Purely. That’s my core,” he says. “This year I realised that I drive a lot better when I have fun.
“Maybe if I had more fun and wasn’t so stressed about everything in the junior formula, maybe it would have been a bit different. But this year I have had the most fun ever. Even with the pressure of my IndyCar debut, I really made sure I was enjoying it.”
Through all of the trials and tribulations and turmoil has come triumph for McElrea, made all the sweeter by the endless grind since those days at the track with his father as an infant.
McElrea is going to tick off as many achievements as he can throughout his career. But if he does not get every piece of silverware, he will be content enough if it comex second to having a great time trying.
The kid blown away by a 40-mile-per-hour go-kart is now at the summit of the mountain he has spent the last two decades climbing. The sacrifices are all paying off.
And whatever the future may look like and whatever accolades may be on the horizon, every corner of every lap of every race - and everything in between - is going to be relished.
This is what Hunter McElrea has worked his whole life for. He is going to live every moment.
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