Auto racing phenom balances INDY NXT, classes at Columbus

When Al Garcia first told Eric Jones, co-owner of Vantage Karting Group, that he wanted to get his 7-year-old son Max into racing, Jones couldn’t help but roll his eyes.

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Garcia was serving as Homestead-Miami Speedway’s vice president of operations in 2017, when the track entered a partnership with Jones’ Vantage Karting Group to take over operations of its karting facility.

“Here we go, another business partner that’s got a kid who thinks he can race,” Garcia recalled Jones thinking about the future INDY NXT race winner and two-time USF championship winner.

Jones obliged and phoned his father, Ron “Pops” Jones, a decorated kart racer in the International Kart Federation’s 2-Cycle Speedway Hall of Fame who also won five classes at the famed Quincy Grand Prix between 1987 and 1992.

Pops had been retired for two years, but agreed to come down and work with Max for his first national race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway.

They won it.

At the next national event in Ocala, Max put the kart on pole. Then came his first race outside Florida, at a technical track in New Orleans, where he immediately ran within a fraction of older drivers who had years of experience.

Suddenly, the old man wasn’t just out of retirement. He was all in.

“Listen, I don’t know what your financial situation is, but you better find some budget to keep that kid racing, because he is an extraordinary talent,” Jones told Garcia.

For the next two years, Pops coached him and was with him at every race, before Max eventually made the jump from karting to the IndyCar development ladder in 2023.

“It’s like the grandpa he never had,” Garcia said.

Raised at the track

Growing up around something and being born into it are two completely different things.

Al had been with Homestead-Miami Speedway since its inception in 1995, eventually becoming its president in 2019, and had briefly raced himself.

So by the time Max was 3 years old, he was already plopped into a kid kart inside the speedway’s shipping and receiving warehouse while being pulled around with a bungee cord tied to the front bumper.

He didn’t really know what was going on, but he knew one thing.

It felt pretty cool to go fast.

Al resisted going all in right away, as competitive karting can begin as young as 5 years old.

He wanted to make sure the interest was really his son’s, but by the time Max was 7, he already started noticing something different.

“Any kid can go fast if they put him in the right situation, but to have him talk to me about how the car was behaving and what we could do to the car to make it faster,” Garcia said. “When he can understand these concepts so young and so early, I was like, wow.”

Eventually, weekends became a lot less casual.

“It was every weekend, just to get seat time,” the 17-year-old said. “Rain, shine, didn’t matter. The middle of August, doesn’t matter. We wouldn’t leave until we did 100 laps.”

As Garcia climbed through the ranks, racing around the country and eventually overseas, his father began picking the brains of veteran racers and sports psychologists.

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What kept coming up was “bandwidth,” or how much of a driver’s mental capacity is spent simply keeping the car at top speed and how much is left to think about other factors.

“Most of these drivers are using 80, 85% of their mental capacity just to drive the car on the limit,” Al said. “If you can do that consistently with 60% of your bandwidth, that leaves 40% to strategize, save tires and think about where you can make a pass. I have timing records from Max in go-karts where, over a 20-lap race, the difference between his fastest lap and his slowest was less than a tenth.”

That composure helped carry Garcia quickly through open-wheel racing. After joining USF2000 in 2023, he won the series championship in 2024, followed it with the USF Pro 2000 title in 2025 and moved up to INDY NXT with ABEL Motorsports this season.

During his rookie INDY NXT season, Garcia became the second-youngest winner in series history at age 17, earning his first victory at the Milwaukee Mile in August, and finished 10th in the championship standings.

“I’ve never really thought of Plan B,” Garcia said. “If I can get paid to put a helmet on for the rest of my life, that’ll be really nice.”

The balancing act

Don’t be fooled by the lack of a back-up plan.

While many individual-sport athletes of his age and caliber turn to the convenience of homeschooling, Garcia spends Thursday through Sunday traveling and racing before returning to Miami’s Christopher Columbus High School on Monday and Tuesday to catch up across seven classes.

“Sir, I’m a semi-professional race car driver and I’m going to be out a lot. So would you be so kind as to give me everything that I need ahead of time?” Max asked Carlos Moro, his math teacher at Columbus, during the first day of school. “I was aghast. I couldn’t believe a 14-year-old was coming to me not with excuses, but with a plan to complete his work ahead of time so he wouldn’t fall behind and could focus on his race.”

With the season now over, he’s eyeing the first consecutive three-week period that he will be home in Miami before offseason testing and other racing commitments pick back up.

“He never asked for special treatment, or for the standards to be changed for him,” said Columbus principal David Pugh. “He holds himself accountable and finds a way to meet the expectations placed for him.”

Part of the balancing act comes at the urging of his mother, Trish, who’s even pushing for Max, an A student already taking dual-enrollment college classes, to go away and attend a university.

Part of it’s also just wanting to be a regular kid.

Last season, the youngest of Garcia’s three teammates was 25.

“It’s nice to come back here and be around kids my age and be able to experience what a normal high school experience is. That doesn’t happen very often,” Garcia said. “When we’re racing, you have to be mature. You’ve got to act like you’re older than you really are.”

At most high schools, people would be breaking their necks in the hallway to get a look at a 17-year-old racing prodigy who’s already been flown out to visit the likes of Ferrari and Red Bull.

But at a school that just produced Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza and Naismith Player of the Year Cameron Boozer, among others, Garcia gets the rare opportunity to tap into some normalcy.

“He’s never cocky about it. He doesn’t bring it up in class,” his dual-enrollment English professor David Ulloa said. “I’d have to ask how his weekend went, and then he’d simply say, ‘It was good. I did well.’ He never made racing his whole identity. I think his peers appreciate that.”

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For now, there’s still senior year to finish first.