Scott Hargrove is a late bloomer.
It’s not a judgment on the 19-year-old from Vancouver, British Columbia, who earned the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda championship in 2013 and will make his Pro Mazda Championship Presented by Cooper Tires debut for Cape Motorsports with Wayne Taylor Racing at the Cooper Tires Winterfest this week.
Where drivers such as Andretti Autosport’s Matthew Brabham hit the ground running at age 7, Hargrove didn’t find his way behind the wheel until he was a teenager. Not that he wanted to wait.
“It wasn’t something we could afford at the time for me to get into it. When I was 11, 12, I was really bugging (my dad), ‘Hey, I really want to get into karting,’ ” Hargrove said. “Finally, when I was 13, he said yes.”
Scott’s father, Jim Hargrove, operates an electronics manufacturing company with his wife when he’s not at the shop of his Sports Car Club of America team. It was from watching his father win a sports car race in support of the Vancouver Molson Indy more than decade ago that Scott caught the racing bug.
Hargrove’s success aligned with his first season in the Costal Kart Club Junior II series, racing for Michael Valiante.
“There was a big learning curve right there at the beginning. (It) took me two or three years to really get my footwork and make sure I was actually doing everything,” said Hargrove, who won the series championship that year. “Then you still have the side where in certain situations that experience the other guys have would take over where I was lacking. That’s just taken me a few years to learn. At this point I think it’s all equaled out now. You only learn so much when you’re that old.”
Five years later, Hargrove clinched the USF2000 championship in his second season with four wins. Two came at the outset of the season on the streets of St. Petersburg., Fla., where the 2014 season kicks off in late March.
Though Hargrove won that weekend’s races by a combined 7.8 seconds, it was not an easy task.
“I was really sick the whole weekend. I had a cold or the flu,” recalled Hargrove. “I could barely talk, I could barely move. I was so sore. I don’t think very many people know that.”
After graduating from high school in June, Hargrove is now focused on the Mazda Road to Indy, which he hopes to ascend as quickly as possible to the IndyCar Series. Aside from transitioning from a sequential gear shift to an H-pattern, there’s nothing that should make Hargrove a late bloomer in Pro Mazda.
“All of the chemistry is all there. They know when I talk about what the car is like, they know how to interpret that,” Hargrove said. “We skip a whole learning process. That’s going to be massive.”
Alongside him will be his teammate of three years, Neil Alberico.
“When you work together as well as me and Neil do, the cars are going to get better really quick,” Hargrove said.
Winterfest expands program
What began in 2011 as a four-race mini-series in Florida for the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda now has grown into a twin-state fiesta that comprises six races for USF2000 and four races for the Pro Mazda Championship Presented by Cooper Tires, as well as a comprehensive test outing for Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires competitors.
The program takes place over seven days at NOLA Motorsports Park, just outside New Orleans and continues at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala.
The popular Winterfest concept enables teams and drivers to gain a head start on preparations for the regular season.
A field of 16 competitors will contest the first Cooper Tires Winterfest for Pro Mazda, which will consist of two races each at NOLA Motorsports Park and Barber Motorsports Park. Drivers from nine countries and four continents are entered in the USF2000 races (three each at NOLA and Barber). There are 12 entries in the Indy Lights portion of Winterfest.