How Tymek Kucharczyk is putting Poland on the IndyCar map
- Archie O’Reilly
- 4 hours ago
- 5 min read
At only 19 years old, one of the fresh faces of the 2026 Indy NXT field is already accustomed to quite the fanfare. Those who have followed the junior career of Tymek Kucharczyk, or watched even one of his races, will probably know this well. It is hard to miss.
If you were to tune into the GB3 Championship in 2023 or 2024, where Kucharczyk won four races, and expose yourself to the chat function on its YouTube broadcasts, you would have been greeted with an inundation of comments in Kucharczyk’s native tongue of Polish. Likewise last year, in his quest for the Euroformula Open crown.
The support for the teenager, who grew up idolising countryman Robert Kubica, is regularly rapturous, including trackside from a travelling contingent of his compatriots.
“It’s great,” Kucharczyk remarked, speaking on Indy NXT media day earlier this month. “I remember watching the races back and comments were fully in Polish so that was quite a funny thing. And it’s been like this since, I would say, F4.
“Then when it was going well in GB3, there was a big, big fanbase of Polish fans. They were coming to the race weekends, even from Poland. That was nuts. That was crazy for me.”
Kucharczyk has certainly never shied away from the support, even at his tender age. Maybe that has been to his detriment at certain points, given the passion can go both ways and occasionally count for the inverse when things go awry.
Overall, though, it all amounts to an immense sense of pride and drive, knowing he has the support of such a fervently sport-loving nation firmly behind him.
“As a young guy, I have to be fair, you’re reading some of the comments,” he admitted. “You want to see what’s going on, what people have to say about you. I don’t really think that’s the healthiest way of doing it; I wish I haven’t read some of the comments. But when you put the helmet on, it’s no time and no place to bother yourself with that.
“It’s obviously good to see [the support] because it’s working like motivation. When you see all of these people cheering for you, you obviously want to prove yourself, you want to do the best job possible. And it’s pushing me forward, it’s giving me more motivation every day to do something else, to be better every day.”
Kucharczyk now plans to bring that tight-knit following stateside in his latest venture as he gears up to compete in Indy NXT in 2026. Joining HMD Motorsports for the season, he becomes the first Polish driver to participate in IndyCar’s premier junior series.
Should the move prove a success and potentially culminate in a graduation up to IndyCar, he believes his fandom could provide a significant growth avenue for the sport in Europe.
“It’s a great market for sponsorship because there is a massive Polish colony here in America,” Kucharczyk explained. “So hopefully we can open new roads. I say it a lot of times that I’m fully dependent on sponsorship; my family doesn’t have money to afford racing.
“So I hope we can find some great solutions here in America and make Poland [and] Europe see how great American racing is. [As] the first Polish driver, I’ll be kind of a Europe ambassador of American racing. And I’m really glad to showcase how big potential here is.”
The Pole, who turns 20 on the season-opening day of practice in St. Petersburg, joins Indy NXT after Euroformula success in 2025. He clinched the title on the final weekend last October, winning the second of three races at Monza by a spectacular 0.001s margin.
Initially for 2026, having won that championship, he was targeting a move to Formula One’s leading junior series, Formula 2, skipping out the Formula 3 stage of the ladder. But with his season finishing so late in the year, vacancies in F2 were limited by that point - particularly of the more desirable, more competitive variety.
Plus, in business-of-racing terms, Kucharczyk is not blessed with financial fortitude.
“We were pretty close to it but the budget killed us,” he asserted of his F2 exploration. “There [were not] a lot of options available with a good team. And in F2, which is such a tricky championship [and] so expensive, if you go with a bad team there is a high risk you won’t be able to showcase your true potential and true form.
“And even though we had maybe some part of the budget, it was also a risk that going to the championship without full budget already confirmed, it might turn really, really messy.”
So Kucharczyk had to switch tack. And within eight days of the Euroformula season concluding, he was in Indianapolis to partake in Indy NXT’s post-season Chris Griffis Memorial Test on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
He had fond memories of karting in the United States so was keen to explore whether he could immerse himself within that culture again on the IndyCar ladder.
“We had to find a good alternative that I would still be able to develop as a driver, to jump into quicker machinery and stay in formula racing. Because that’s what I wanted to do; I wanted to be in single-seaters,” he said. “The only real option I was thinking about was Indy NXT so we scheduled a test at IMS and I just fell in love with how things turn around here.
“As an alternative, Indy NXT, which is so much cheaper, provides more races than most of the series in Europe, is so diverse - you race on road courses, street courses, oval courses - is a great development for me as a racing driver and for my future career as well.”
Kucharczyk has paid a growing interest in IndyCar in recent years. With that budding fandom, there also grew this appetite to potentially compete across the Atlantic, should the right circumstances arrive.
“I watched Indy 500 when I was smaller. But since three, four years, I’ve really focused on watching most of the races when I could, staying up all night or whatever,” he disclosed. I really love the racing and I’ve been telling my parents for the past three, two years that IndyCar racing is so much more fun [compared] to Europe
“It’s old-school and I would say I’m an old-school driver. I really enjoy watching it and if there’ll be any possibilities then I would love to take part in it.”
There is no hiding that Indy NXT was second-in-command as an option this off-season, with F2 taking precedence. But that is only naturally given his progression through the European ranks, tracing the footsteps of Kubica on the road to F1.
But Kucharczyk holds no undue irritation at the fact a drive in F2 did not materialise. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Now he has switched stateside, he is all-in and with an open mind.
“I’m the type of person that doesn’t regret anything in life so I’m just really looking forward to the experience I will have here in America,” he insisted. “We were aiming for F2 for most of the last year but at some point you have to realise that this is a very, very big long shot.
“America is a new place that I can really showcase my potential and my talent. And if you’re a type of driver that lacks a budget, America is a place where someone can see you and pick you up. The idea of the road to IndyCar is so much better than the road to F1; if you win a championship, you have a scholarship to do another level so it’s just much more natural.
“The people care about fast drivers and I have nothing left than trying to be the quickest one of them. Maybe I fall in love so much that I never want to go back to Europe. F2, F1 is still inside [but] let’s see how it goes.”
