As the New Year Beckons, Here Are the First Five Full-Season Youngsters Worth Following
By John Oreovicz
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – It’s often said that this is a golden era for sports car racing. That’s indisputably true, but the spotlight is generally on the cars – the high-tech, hybrid-powered Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) cars that compete in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, or the remarkable number of manufacturers that build production-based racing cars to the international GT3 standard, including IMSA’s Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) and GTD PRO classes.
Truth be told, it’s also a magnificent time to be a sports car driver. The longtime school of thought is that open-wheel drivers turn to sports cars toward the end of their careers. And there’s plenty of proof of that through generations of drivers, from the likes of Jacky Ickx, Derek Bell, Scott Pruett, Allan McNish, to more recently, Juan Pablo Montoya and Helio Castroneves.
Now, with sports car racing booming around the world, many aspiring racers are shifting their open-wheel dreams to cars with fenders and closed cockpits long before they reach Formula 1 or Indy cars. Times change, and the demographics of sports car racing are trending younger – often much younger.
Veteran professionals and Bronze-rated ‘gentleman’ drivers still feature throughout the field. But sports car racing circa 2025/26 features an assortment of youthful talent that stacks up with any other form of motorsport.
Here, in alphabetical order, are the first five of 10 drivers 30 and under we’ve selected to keep an eye on that are slated to compete full-time in the 2026 WeatherTech Championship.
Sharing the common denominator of committing to sports car racing at an early age, it’s a dynamic group that sports car racing fans will be cheering for and hearing about for many years to come.
Jack Aitken, 30, No. 31 Cadillac Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R (Grand Touring Prototype, GTP)
Of this group, Aitken is the most traditional, moving to sports cars full-time in 2021 at the relatively advanced age of 26. By then, he was a four-time race winner in Formula 2 (his first teammate was George Russell) and a Formula 1 test driver for Renault starting in 2016. Aitken later served as Williams F1’s reserve driver and started a single Grand Prix in 2020. Sports car success came quickly for the English driver of Korean descent; he accumulated plenty of miles in Lamborghini GT3 cars, including a full season in the DTM championship. He dovetailed that in 2023 with four IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup races for Cadillac Whelen in the WeatherTech Championship, finding victory lane quickly in the 2023 Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. Aitken raced the Cadillac V-Series.R full-time for Whelen the last two years, claiming a pair of late-season wins to finish second in the 2025 GTP standings. His ambitious 2026 program includes full-time efforts for Cadillac in IMSA and the FIA World Endurance Championship.
“It was completely unexpected, finishing second,” Aitken said. “We stopped looking at the championship and how much we’d lost. We needed the results weekend per weekend. We were a long way off, but I knew it wasn’t over. I was shocked it wasn’t third, it was second.”
Julien Andlauer, 26, No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 (GTP)
A French Formula 4 race winner as a teenager, Andlauer’s history with Porsche dates back almost a decade already to rise into regional Porsche Carrera Cup series. Then just 18, he also won his class at the 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans, co-driving a Porsche 911 RSR with eventual IMSA champion Matt Campbell and Christian Ried for Dempsey Proton Racing. Andlauer’s rise from GT cars into proper top-class prototypes occurred ahead of 2024, where he starred in Proton’s customer 963 and worked his way into the Porsche Penske Motorsport stable.
He’s made sporadic IMSA starts from 2022 through 2025, but he’s never driven a full WeatherTech Championship season. Slotted in alongside Felipe Nasr for 2026, his progress will be worth watching.
Giacomo Altoè, 25, No. 81 DragonSpeed Corvette Z06 GT3.R (Grand Touring Daytona, GTD)
Altoè spent a single season racing open-wheel Formula 4 cars in his native Italy when he was 15 before switching to Touring Car (TCR) class sports cars like those that compete in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge.
He then settled into an extended period of competing in GT3-specification Lamborghinis which included winning the Pro class of the Lamborghini Super Trofeo championship in Europe and then the 2018 World Finals. The then-unheralded teenager made his Rolex 24 At Daytona debut in 2019 in a Lamborghini. When his longtime team Emil Frey Racing switched to Ferrari in 2023, so did Altoè, which brought him to the attention of Conquest Racing owner Eric Bachelart.
Altoè was part of Conquest’s GTD PRO victory at IMSA’s Road America visit in 2024. In 2025, he transferred to DragonSpeed, where he took three GTD class poles, a win at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and five other podiums, all of which helped Albert Costa finish second in the GTD PRO standings. Altoè remains with DragonSpeed, which will switch its No. 81 from Ferrari to the Corvette Z06 GT3.R in 2026.
Roman De Angelis, 24, No. 23 Aston Martin THOR Team Aston Martin Valkyrie (GTP)
A native of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, De Angelis raced Formula Fords for a single season in 2016 before starring in what is now known as Porsche Carrera Cup competition from 2017-19.
His performance claiming the Platinum class championship of the 2019 Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge with 10 wins in 16 starts caught the attention of The Heart of Racing team principal Ian James, who signed the then-18-year-old to a full IMSA GTD campaign in 2020. De Angelis took his first IMSA race win in 2021, won the GTD championship in ’22, and was promoted to Aston Martin THOR Team’s prototype program in 2025. He was entrusted to drive the anchor stint that netted the Aston Martin Valkyrie a second-place finish at Petit Le Mans to close out the 2025 season.
“I think if I could have been in a top-class prototype at any point in my career, I would have been happy,” De Angelis said. “But for it to happen now, with this regulation set where there is something like 15 participating manufacturers around the world, this is really the peak of sports car racing. There are eras from the past I Iook at as being the pinnacle, but I don’t think people are going to be able to look back and not say this is the best era. So many great manufacturers, so many great drivers, so many great events. It’s pretty special to be involved in that right now, and I’m sure even down the road it will be more special.”
Louis Deletraz, 28, No. 40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac V-Series.R (GTP)
The son of Swiss former racer Jean-Denis Deletraz advanced through the European open ladder, raced three seasons in Formula 2, and served development, simulator and reserve driver roles for the Renault and Haas F1 teams. After winning the 2020 Virtual Le Mans, Louis switched his attention to real-life sports cars and won the LMP2 (Le Mans Prototype 2) class of the European Le Mans Series in ’21, ’22, ’24 and ’25.
He and Robert Kubica also won the LMP2 crown in the FIA World Endurance Championship in ’23, the same year Deletraz joined Wayne Taylor Racing for IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup events. He’s been teamed with Jordan Taylor in WTR’s No. 40 GTP entry full-time the last two years, scoring a win at the ’24 Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.
Check back for Part 2 looking at the next batch of five under 30 full-timers to watch.