Juan Manuel Correa is an Ecuadorian American racing driver. At age 14, he moved to Europe to chase the dream of reaching Formula One, considered by many to be the most prestigious form of global motorsport.

At one point, he was the closest American to reaching F1. That all changed in 2019 during an F2 race in Belgium — Correa was involved in a crash that left him severally injured. Another driver died.

Correa’s legs were shattered and he spent weeks in a coma, having lung complications along the way. He says the lengthy rehab time after the accident effectively ended his chance of racing in F1.

“The path to F1,” says Correa, “it’s a train that goes by once and if you miss it, it’s very difficult that it’ll come by again.”

Correa resumed his racing career once he felt healthy enough to do so. But even after returning, he says it wasn’t until late 2023 that he started to feel like himself again behind the wheel.

Now he’s racing in America, competing in the Indy NXT Series for HMD Motorsports at this weekend’s Detroit Grand Prix. Correa says he’d be happy racing in anything, whether it’s in open-wheel or sportscar, but wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to progress into IndyCar if given the chance.

“I’d like to be getting paid to drive a racecar,” says Correa, “and I’m very lucky to be so close to being in that position.”

The Detroit event marks Correa’s second race weekend in Indy NXT. He says his immediate goal is to continue learning the cars and how racing works in America, having been in Europe for most of his career.

IndyCar teams and drivers hit the streets of downtown Detroit next week for the city’s annual Grand Prix. That will come after this weekend’s running of the Indianapolis 500 — known as the world’s largest single day sporting event.

However, there’s a cloud over this year’s race, as the team and series owned by Detroiter Roger Penske are embroiled in scandal. The issue stems from an illegal part found on two of the Team Penske cars during Indy 500 qualifying last weekend.

Despite the discovery, other teams complained they had notified officials of the rules breach weeks ago. It was even found that the Team Penske car Josef Newgarden drove to victory in the 2024 Indy 500 has the same illegal part on it as it sits in the speedway’s museum.

Compounding frustrations among competitors, this isn’t the first time Team Penske has been caught in a technical scandal. It was discovered last year that the team had illegally mapped a button on the steering wheel to give the cars more power.

Like this year’s infraction, that rules breach wasn’t discovered until after Team Penske used it in competition.

The underlying frustration is that Roger Penske owns Team Penske and owns the IndyCar Series, which staffs all of its officiating in-house. It’s left competitors frustrated about possible conflict of interest when it comes to upholding rules.

The two cars found with illegal parts will start from the back of the field at this weekend’s Indy 500 and Roger Penske has fired his IndyCar team’s senior management. But questions about the integrity of officiating in the IndyCar Series still exist.

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