Young Guns
Happy New Year... yeah, okay, it's a little late - so sue me - but before the racing year gets going, I always like to take a look around
to see just who is liable to make an impact in the upcoming year. We can all have a guess at who will win Formula 1, Nextel Cup and others, but the real challenge is to see if we can pick out an up and coming Canadian star of motorsports. Who is in line to be the next Jacques Villeneuve, Paul Tracy, Patrick Carpentier, Ron Fellows or Alex Tagliani? In short, who will be the next household name in Canadian motorsports. There are a few making their way up, Andrew Ranger, Bruno Spengler and Michael Valiante are becoming better known each year. One 'ladder' step down, you have names like Robert Wickens, Kevin Lacroix, and a few others, but one of the brightest young stars is making his formula car debut this year in Formula BMW USA.
Philip Major is - on the outside - your average teenager from Ottawa. He does the school thing, sports, is a tennis instructor, he's a certified level 1 Instructor for Tennis Canada, and enjoys his remote control cars. And like most teenagers, he enjoys music, he's, in fact, a concert band musician at Ashbury College, and he does some X-country running, but it's when he puts on a helmet that Major, well, turns into something 'major'.
That's when all who are fortunate enough to be at the track that day get to witness an average kid morph into one of Canada's brightest up and coming race car drivers. It is nearly a Jekyll & Hyde transformation, as this polite, well spoken Ottawa teenager becomes a force to be reckoned with on any racetrack in North America.
Major's
roots in racing have come from the traditional discipline, karting. He competed in the Sunoco Ron Fellows Karting Championship - a regional karting championship in Ontario, Canada - and there, he honed his skills both on and off the track.
"I really enjoyed my time karting," says Major. "It gave me some insight as to what it takes to compete at the top level of karting in Canada. I knew then that racing was what I wanted to do."
Major, with support from his family, contracted with Kart Depot Predators to campaign a Honda Civic in the Honda Michelin Challenge Series in 2005.
"I really wanted Philip to have a good first experience in auto racing," says his father Norm Major. "We got him a drive in a good first year team, the same team we had been karting with, so the familiarity was already there."
Happy New Year... yeah, okay, it's a little late - so sue me - but before the racing year gets going, I always like to take a look around
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| Philip Major is a force to be reckoned with on any racetrack in North America. (Photo: Jim Leggett, RussBondAgency.com) |
Philip Major is - on the outside - your average teenager from Ottawa. He does the school thing, sports, is a tennis instructor, he's a certified level 1 Instructor for Tennis Canada, and enjoys his remote control cars. And like most teenagers, he enjoys music, he's, in fact, a concert band musician at Ashbury College, and he does some X-country running, but it's when he puts on a helmet that Major, well, turns into something 'major'.
That's when all who are fortunate enough to be at the track that day get to witness an average kid morph into one of Canada's brightest up and coming race car drivers. It is nearly a Jekyll & Hyde transformation, as this polite, well spoken Ottawa teenager becomes a force to be reckoned with on any racetrack in North America.
Major's
 |
| Major, with support from his family, contracted with Kart Depot Predators to campaign a Honda Civic in the Honda Michelin Challenge Series in 2005. (Photo: Jim Leggett, RussBondAgency.com) |
"I really enjoyed my time karting," says Major. "It gave me some insight as to what it takes to compete at the top level of karting in Canada. I knew then that racing was what I wanted to do."
Major, with support from his family, contracted with Kart Depot Predators to campaign a Honda Civic in the Honda Michelin Challenge Series in 2005.
"I really wanted Philip to have a good first experience in auto racing," says his father Norm Major. "We got him a drive in a good first year team, the same team we had been karting with, so the familiarity was already there."