Jean-Karl Vernay is looking for a steering wheel

Leaving France to race in the United States last season, Jean-Karl Vernay aimed for the Indy Lights title. Become champion of this category considered to be the antechamber ofIndyCar should in theory open the doors to the queen discipline for him and assure him a future as a professional driver across the Atlantic like Sébastien Bourdais et simon pagenaud...

With three seasons in F3 Euroseries within the Signature team, the young Villeurbanne therefore joined the Sam Schmidt Motorsports team, one of the most successful in Indy Lights. After an impressive series of victories on road circuits, the Frenchman has also become more experienced on ovals. In the end, he never left the lead in the general classification and won, in his first season, the title he had come for.

Until then, things seemed to be going as Jean-Karl had imagined. The Frenchman was contacted by several IndyCar teams. But all required a budget of around $4 million. A sum that one of Vernay's partners was ready to put in at the start of the adventure, but which he no longer plans to spend. Therefore, despite the 500 dollars allocated by the organization to the Indy Lights champion, the latter finds himself today without any assurance of continuing his career in the USA today. Hence his return to France and the testing carried out at the wheel of the Oreca LMP2 recently.

“For the moment, I have no steering wheel” regrets Vernay, contacted by telephone this morning. “I still have some hopes in the United States since I am still talking with the Foyt team. We are trying to find a solution. The only drivers who manage to move from Indy Lights to IndyCar are not the top two or three, but those who manage to raise the budget. Unfortunately, this is not my case. I am also looking for Endurance in Europe or the United States. Hence the tests with Oreca. I hope this can lead to a program” he concluded.