There is a certain kind of quiet that happens the week before a season starts.
Not the quiet of “nothing is going on.” More like the quiet inside a race shop when the radios are charged, the spares are counted twice, the tires are stacked like poker chips, and somebody is holding a cup of coffee like it is a tool. You can feel the whole year leaning forward, just a little.
Next week, Radical Cup North America lights the fuse at Sebring, and Crown Racing is showing up with two full-season stories that could not be more different on paper, yet somehow make perfect sense in the same paddock. Josh Holtz goes after Pro 1500 with that young-driver mix of optimism and impatience. Evan Wolf commits to Pro 1340 with the calm seriousness of a guy who has built a whole life around precision and then decided, at last, to spend some of it on a dream.
Sebring is a proper place to begin because it does not care what you posted on Instagram. Sebring cares about what the car does when it is skipping across concrete seams and you are still asking it to brake at the three board like you meant it. The schedule is packed in the way that makes you sleep well and wake up earlier than you planned. Track walk Wednesday evening. Test sessions Thursday. Practice Friday. Qualifying Saturday morning. Race 1 Saturday afternoon. Then two more 40-minute races on Sunday.
Crown Racing rolls into 2026 with a little extra confidence in the trailer, too, because we are fresh off a Pro 1340 Radical World Championship at VIR with Jace Bacon, the kind of result that does not happen by accident. It is proof that our program travels, that our prep holds up when the paddock gets serious, and that we know how to put a driver in position when it matters most. That momentum matters heading into Sebring, because you do not defend a reputation with words in March. You do it with laps.
But this piece is not just about next week. It is about the kind of season that waits on the other side of it.
The 2026 Radical Cup North America calendar is the sort of list you read twice, once for the romance and once for the logistics.
You start at Sebring. Then you go to Sonoma, which is either the most beautiful way to be humbled by elevation change or the most expensive place to realize you picked the wrong gear, depending on your personality. Then, in June, the series drops into Road America on an IndyCar weekend, which is one of those sentences that still makes you grin because it means real crowds, real energy, and that faint feeling you get when you walk through a paddock and realize you are sharing real estate with the big show.
By late July you are at Road Atlanta, home of a thousand stories and at least a few bruised egos, the kind of track that rewards courage but charges interest. Then comes Lime Rock, which is where I will say something honest.
We are going to Lime Rock because the schedule says we are going to Lime Rock.
It is not that Lime Rock is bad. Lime Rock is a perfectly fine racetrack in the same way that running wind sprints is perfectly fine exercise. It is short, it is intense, and it tends to make you question your life choices around the third right-hander that feels exactly like the second right-hander that felt exactly like the first right-hander. We will show up, we will race hard, and we will pretend we are not counting the days until Texas.
Because the finale is Circuit of the Americas with WEC.
That is the exclamation point on this season. Not just because COTA is a modern cathedral of speed and elevation and awkwardly steep corners, but because the WEC weekend has a gravity to it. It feels global. It feels important. It makes even a support paddock feel like it is standing closer to the center of the sport.
And it matters for our two guys, for different reasons.
Josh Holtz is the Pro 1500 entry, car number 7. He is from New York, he is hungry, and he is doing the thing that is both admirable and slightly terrifying for a young driver: stepping up quickly.
Josh came through SR1 driving courses, learned the building blocks, and then chose a series that does not hand out comfort. Radical Cup is where you show up and learn fast or you spend the season watching other people learn fast. Josh knows that. He is also out working sponsorships like it is a second job, and he has already landed his first partner, which is not a detail, it is a signal.
“Everybody wants to be ‘sponsored,’” Josh said, “but I’m trying to build something that earns it. I’m not asking somebody to buy a sticker. I’m asking them to believe I’m going to get better every month.”
He is doing it with structure, too. His coach is Dominic Cicero at DCicero Coaching, a guy with real experience in LMP3 and open-wheel environments, which usually means two things: he has seen what good looks like, and he is not sentimental about excuses.
Dominic’s version of encouragement is more like a checklist.
“Josh is the kind of driver you can coach because he wants facts,” Dominic said. “He doesn’t want a pep talk, he wants a plan. We’re going to be ruthless about the basics early, braking, repeatability, traffic, and then we’ll let the speed show up. If we do it right, by the time we get to Road America, he’ll feel like a different driver.”
Evan Wolf is our Pro 1340 entry, car number 68. Evan is an ophthalmologist from Alaska, which means his day job is literally about helping people see. Now he is chasing a season that will demand he sees everything at once: brake markers, mirrors, corner stations, tire behavior, lap time, and the one guy in front of him who suddenly decided to park it on the apex.
Evan is not new to the environment. He has years of experience at Apex, and he has had a taste of Radical Cup on select weekends. But 2026 is the year he goes all in. Full season. Full commitment. No “maybe we do a few.” This is the part where the dream becomes a line item.
Evan laughed when we asked him why now.
“I’ve spent my life telling people not to wait,” he said. “At some point it gets awkward if you don’t take your own advice.”
Joey Martin, our team manager, has been around enough race weekends to know which drivers are chasing a feeling and which drivers are chasing improvement.
“Evan is steady in a way you can build on,” Joey said. “He’s not trying to win the season in March. He’s trying to win the season in September. That mindset matters when the year gets long.”
Joey sees Josh the same way, but with a different kind of confidence.
“Josh has that edge you can’t really teach,” Joey said. “The trick is aiming it. Our job is to keep the hunger, and add discipline. If we do that, you’ll see big jumps from him as the schedule goes on.”
That is the heart of this season for Crown Racing. Two cars, two classes, two very different kinds of momentum.
Pro 1340 is a class that rewards smoothness, patience, and the ability to carry speed where other people are losing it. It is momentum racing, and momentum racing is honest. It tells you what your hands are doing, what your feet are doing, and what your ego is doing. Evan’s story fits that perfectly. He is not trying to brute-force it. He is building something.
Pro 1500 is a little different. It still rewards finesse, but it gives you more tools to fight with. More power. More temptation. More opportunities to be a hero, and more opportunities to learn why heroes sometimes finish tenth. Josh’s season is going to be about turning big ambition into consistent execution, and that is exactly the kind of transformation this championship can produce when you take it seriously.
And the calendar itself becomes part of the character arc.
Sebring will teach you what breaks and what holds. Sonoma will teach you what the car does when the track is trying to throw you downhill. Road America will teach you about bravery at speed and focus in a bigger-show environment. Road Atlanta will test your nerve. Lime Rock will test your attitude. COTA will test everything at once, with the added pressure of being on a weekend that feels like it belongs in a different category of racing.
That is why this season feels exciting. Not because we are promising miracles, but because the ingredients are real.
A hungry young driver from New York trying to climb quickly, with a serious coach and a first sponsor already on the board.
A surgeon of vision from Alaska who decided the dream was not going to be postponed again, committing to a full season and a class that rewards maturity.
A team that understands this is a long game, and a schedule that ends on a world-class stage.
Sebring is next week, and it starts the way racing always starts: with coffee, quiet, and the subtle certainty that once the first session goes green, the year will move fast.
We would not have it any other way.
