The rumors of Josh Pierson combining his sportscar effort with some open-wheel racing in North America began a few weeks ago and today, those rumors turned into facts. Inking a deal with the championship-winning HMD Motorsports with Dale Coyne Racing program for a campaign in the 2023 Indy Lights series, the 16-year-old Pierson is set to begin his climb towards the pinnacle of open-wheel racing in North America.

“I am excited to start the next chapter of my motorsports career,” expressed an excited Pierson, who turned 16 years of age earlier in 2022. “While I will continue on with United Autosport in WEC (World Endurance Championship), I could not pass up the opportunity to join HMD Motorsports and further my open-wheel racing career in North America.”

Behind the wheel, since he was just two years old, Pierson already has a long list of accomplishments and the young driver’s resume grows more today by becoming a driver for the potent HMD Motorsports efforts.

Pierson has been re-writing the history books for several years, collecting accolades and victories as he progresses towards a professional motorsports career. Josh began racing open-wheel cars just a few years ago at thirteen; at ages fourteen and fifteen, he was the youngest driver on the grid in the Road to Indy’s Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship. At the beginning of 2022, he became the youngest driver to participate in IMSA’s Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. Just two months later, he earned the title of the youngest race winner in the FIA’s World Endurance Championship (WEC) with a victory at the 1000 Miles of Sebring. As of June 2022, Josh became the youngest starter in the history of the 24 Hours of Le Mans and finished sixth in the LMP2 class and tenth overall.

Now, just one rung of the ladder away from the NTT INDYCAR Series, Pierson is ready to attack North America’s highest level of junior open-wheel racing as the youngest competitor.

Pierson added, “Age is just a number and on the track, we are all racers and competitors. It is not going to be easy, but I have my personal goals set, and the team has goals for me as well. I am ready to get started later this week.”

“Josh has proven himself in all forms of motorsports,” explained HMD Motorsports General Manager Mike Maurini. “For his young age, he has been extremely impressive in the sportscar ranks and shown that he has what it takes to be a champion in every discipline. We welcome him to the HMD Motorsports family and look forward to watching him progress in the future.”

Josh Pierson will make his 2023 Indy Lights testing debut on October 21^st at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with HMD Motorsports.

That’s now all 8 of the 8 Indy Lights drivers for HMD named. Pierson joins Rasmus Lindh, Kyffin Simpson, Danial Frost, Christian Bogle, Josh Green, Nolan Siegel and Christian Rasmussen with the team for 2023.

Car Count

We know HMD has 8 cars, Andretti should return with 4 and now JHR has 2. Legacy Autosport and Cape Motorsports will join the series as both will each have a pair of drivers themselves.

That brings the car count up to 18 already.

Then you can see a return of Force Indy and Abel Motorsports may stay too. Whether that’s 1 or 2 cars for Abel remains to be seen but that’s at least 20 cars there. What about TJ Speed? They had 2 cars in 2022?