Last Sunday marked the 10th round of the 2026 Indy NXT season, and Tymek Kucharczyk has finished in the top 10 at each race so far. Championship leader Nikita Johnson is the only other driver to achieve this.
The 20-year-old from Poland moved Stateside over the winter to join HMD Motorsports. This has come on the back of him winning the 2025 Euroformula Open Championship in the most dramatic way at Monza.
While this was his first title in single-seaters, the Polish driver had already shown his raw speed and talent in Spanish F4 and GB3.
An unbelievably impressive rookie Indy NXT campaign to date
Having had a difficult weekend at the Macau Grand Prix in late 2025, Tymek Kucharczyk applied those lessons for the start of the Indy NXT season at St. Pete. A cautious approach still led to a very strong 3rd place to start 2026 off well.
Through the first seven rounds, he was not outside the top 5. At the second race at IMS during that run, the driver of car #71 held off Max Taylor in an intense race to take his first win in the category.
A remarkable turnaround at Road America for Tymek Kucharczyk
After a P9 in his first Indy NXT oval race at Gateway, Road America had been a struggle through practice and qualifying for the Pole. A grid penalty for blocking Colin Kaminsky did not help his cause either.
On used tyres for Race 1, he kept the top 10 streak alive with a P8 finish from 14th on the grid. However, it was Sunday when he came alive.
From 16th on the grid on new tyres versus quite a few on used rubber, Kucharczyk carved his way through on two occasions. Running P4 on lap 8, a move around the outside of championship rival Johnson at turn 5 was never going to work and he had a brief moment through the grass.
“When you’re so quick, it’s easy to get a bit hot-headed and do a stupid move, which I did,” he admitted post-race to Pit Debrief and other media outlets.
Unperturbed, he stormed back through from 8th to finish 3rd. That became P2 thanks to a DSQ for Alessandro de Tullio.
His race pace was by far the quickest on Sunday, lapping over half a second quicker than anyone else at points.
Car changes
Asked by Pit Debrief about the remarkable turnaround, the Pole credited his engineer and car changes to help him deliver a brilliant showing.
“I mean, for me the biggest thing that I come away with is I tried to druve like the car wanted to be driven. It just didn’t work for me.
“We spent a lot of time yesterday just figuring out what can we change to actually make me feel comfortable in a car. That’s what exactly we did.
“Yeah, I mean, that’s obviously a big part of my engineer, of my connection, my chemistry with him. He’s a really good guy. He has a lot of experience.
“Yeah, I’m just happy to finally drive a car that’s capable of going fast.”
An Indy NXT title contender
With seven races to go, Tymek Kucharczyk trails an also impressive Nikita Johnson by six points. Former F2 race winner Enzo Fittipaldi is very much in the mix as well, with Max Taylor, Lochie Hughes and Myles Rowe at a distance for the time being.
While the two ovals could prove relatively tricky, the 20-year-old has shown speed and consistency to be in the title hunt all the way to Laguna Seca at the end of the 2026 Indy NXT season.
A tough road to make it to Indy NXT
Motorsport is cutthroat and brutal. Talent is important, of course. On top of that, however, drivers need loyal sponsors in their karting days and then even more in single-seaters. Tymek Kucharczyk has struggled for finances through his career, as he told Pit Debrief in an exclusive interview earlier this year.
Because of it, last-minute deals to continue in single-seaters have been a regular occurrence. This has also meant he has struggled to do pre-season programmes, although that has not been the case in 2026 as Mubi have been on board since last year.
“So since I was 10 years old, I was driving for free.
“Even in go-kart, I was a factory driver. I had opportunity to drive because team really wanted me, team seen potential in me, team seen form of a driver who could maybe invite other drivers because I could show that the material we had is actually quite decent and we’re fast. So since then, I was pretty much driving for free.
“It’s all a bit here and there, you’re kind of waiting for the opportunity. And then when the opportunity comes, you just got to deliver. You got to do your best because otherwise this might be your last race.
“And it’s been like this for me for since I can remember, really. I never had that secure mind of, ‘okay, this is a full season, I have time to develop, to actually learn, to balance things.’
“It was all a bit kind of bound to the pressure and the fact that I really wanted to race.
“But at the same time, I had to prove that I can race and that I’m worthy to race.”
Tymek Kucharczyk earning a shot in Formula 2 or IndyCar
His start in Indy NXT is even more impressive when you consider a solid amount of his rivals on the grid have driven at some of these circuits at least once, as well as the exceptional raw speed and talent they have themselves.
Alongside that, with only a single session or two practice sessions depending on whether it’s a doubleheader or one race per event, the Pole’s adaptability has been one of the biggest and most eye-catching stories of the season to date.
It is clear Tymek Kucharczyk is enjoying racing in the United States and working with the excellent HMD Motorsports squad. Even if he falls short of the Indy NXT title, there is bound to be IndyCar teams keeping a close eye on him for the future.
Formula 2 should also be an option. While he is not the finished product yet, nobody is at this level. The adaptability, speed, overtaking ability and consistency while learning new tracks this year is proof of a very talented young man.
Kucharczyk’s issue? Getting the funding required to do a season in F2. Budgets are north of a million euro. Pay drivers are also common in IndyCar as well, so getting himself into either will not be straightforward from a financial perspective.
Nonetheless, Tymek Kucharczyk is Poland’s most talented single-seater driver since Robert Kubica. His exploits in the US show he is worthy of an opportunity in IndyCar in the future, or the category below Formula 1.
