Payton Westcott on track in Cremona for the first event of Champions of the Future Academy Program (Photo: Westcott Family)

The EKN Driver Diary returns for 2024 with a focus of international competition for a driver from the United States of America. California driver Payton Westcott is taking part in the new Champions of the Future Academy Program. The six event series is based around the ‘arrive and drive’ concept, promoted and hosted by RGMMC. The OK-N Senior and OK-N Junior categories competing on Kart Republic / IAME entries with the Mini 60 all aboard Parolin / TM machines.

Payton is among the rising stars in the Junior ranks here in the USA, earning her first victories at the California ProKart Challenge this season while finishing third in the championship standings for Challenge of the Americas.

Westcott is providing EKN with a look into her travel and weekend competing at the Champions of the Future Academy Program. The first event was held on March 27-31 at the Kartodromo Cremona Circuit in Italy.

Introduction

Westcott (far right) is among nine drivers earning schloarship for Champions of the Future Academy Program through F1 Academy (Photo: F1 Academy)

My name is Payton Westcott. I just turned 15 and I live in Laguna Beach, California with my parents, my brother, and our Puppy named Nico. I have been karting for three years. In local series races, I race as a privateer under PWR Racing (my initials) and in National level races, I race with Rolison Performance Group.

In December 2023, I applied to the Champions of the Future Karting Academy – which is a 6 weekend, 12 race series located in Europe and the Middle East. Three classes run in the series, Mini 60, OK-N Junior, and OK-N Senior with 36 drivers in each class. The F1 Academy Discover Your Drive, in collaboration with Susie Wolff, offered three scholarships in each class to assist with costs associated with the program. In January, I was contacted and awarded the scholarship in the OK-N Senior class.

We boarded a plane on Monday, March 25 from LAX to Milan with my parents and my mechanic, Matt Johnson, for my first trip to Europe. We landed in the afternoon on Tuesday and took a drive through Milan. We arrived at our bed and breakfast in time to unpack, shower and have dinner. The food was great.

Each morning, I ate with croissants, fresh orange juice, soft boiled eggs from the chickens down the street, and fresh kiwi. Our drive to the track was on a single lane road that was a bit like a race track itself. I kept telling my dad to take it like a racetrack, but he kept mentioning something about the tractors coming at him and the steep drop off on either side of the road, sounded like excuses to me.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

The roads to Cremona were narrow (Photo: Westcott Family)

The first day at the track was for getting our equipment and track walks. This will be the only race weekend with two days of testing and the series has a strict rule that no driver can drive on the track two weeks prior to the test days. Having never been to Europe, I appreciated the two days of testing, even if it rained for most of them.

The series had a lottery system for the chassis, and I drew chassis #1, which will be my chassis for the entire series. That chassis came with an engine for the test days, so we quickly got to work on the chassis, tires, and kart setup. Kart Republic is the chassis sponsor for the OK-N Junior and Senior categories, and I had never driven a KR kart. I also had only driven the OK-N Senior engine once. Luckily, our neighbor in the paddock and his mechanic were very experienced with the chassis and knew the track well.

Thursday, March 28, 2024

The first two days on track it rained on and off. I was able to get on track on slicks and wets. Because I had earned the F1 Academy Scholarship, I attended a presentation with Susie Wolff to learn more about the Academy, the expectations of the scholarship winners, and the series itself. I also participated in press photos and then filmed media clips to be used throughout the series. It was a cool experience and one that will help me going forward.

Each night dinner was served at the hotel at 7:15pm. These were long dinners with the choice of homemade pasta, meat, and desert. The pasta was amazing. We also learned that lemon gelato, while not on the menu, was always available. The hotel had its own garden so everything was fresh, and I had lemon gelato every night. Sleep was a treat – with church bells going off every half hour and a rooster having no sense of time.

Friday, March 29, 2024

Westcott in attendance of presentation with Susie Wolff (Photo: Westcott Family)

The first official day of the event was Friday, where we had five practice sessions. After sitting 27th in the first session, I posted the 17th quickest lap in the third practice. Our fifth and final session of the day I was 20th on the time sheet as we continued to improve throughout the day.

Saturday, March 30, 2024

Saturday brought a dry track and our first race. The schedule for each race day was warm-up, qualifying, two heats that are not progressive, and a Final. Unfortunately, I had a flat tire during qualifying to end up 25th in the session. I worked up to 19th in the opening heat race, however, I received two five-second penalties. One for contact and the other for pushback bumper. This placed me 26th in the results. I ended up finishing 20th in the second heat race, thus keeping me in 25th for the start of the Final. After 22 laps, I crossed the line in 19th but received another pushback bumper penalty to classify me in 20th for the first round.

Sunday, March 31, 2024

The final day of the opening event brought a lot of rain. Practice up to Heat #1 was all on rain tires with driver’s choice in heat 2 and slicks in the main. Qualifying did not go as planned, spinning in the first lap. I tried to get started again, but the series allows for one attempt, and I was not successful. This put me 25th as the starting position for both heat races. The heats were much better, climbing up to 13th in the wet and then up to 17th on a drying track. I started 14th in the main event on a dry track. The start was not what I hoped as I fell back to 22nd and drove myself into 12th by the end of the 22 laps. Penalties helped to push me into a top-10 finish, ending up ninth in the final classifications for my first top-10 result in my first time racing in Europe, in my OK-N Senior debut weekend.

It’s not the full weekend we were hoping for, but it will allow us to carry some momentum to be able to improve in the upcoming weekends. We head to Valencia, Spain and the International Lucas Guerrero Karting Cirucit on May 10-12 for the second event of the program.

Payton Westcott Social Media

Instagram: @paytonwestcott

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