Behind the Helmet
Meet the driver underneath the helmet.
Kelsey Pinkowski
Kelsey Pinkowski, 22, grew up in Rochester, New York, and first got behind a wheel at age 10 in indoor karts at a local mall. The spark didn't turn into a real pursuit until high school, when she enrolled at Bertil Roos Racing School in Florida and trained under former British F1 driver Divina Galica, earning her SCCA competition license soon after.
Her early results backed up the promise: third overall and top rookie in the 2021 Bertil Roos Winter Series, followed by seasons with the Lucas Oil School of Racing and F4 testing with Crosslink Motorsports. Along the way she connected with WEC LMGTE Am podium finisher Nic Jönsson, who became her coach, and picked up standout results including a runner-up finish at the Hilliard U.S. Vintage Grand Prix and a Formula SAE Michigan win with RIT's Formula Student team.
In 2025, an unexpected call led Kelsey to Japan's all-female Kyojo Cup with Team KCMG — a leap she took without a second thought. Racing in front of crowds of 15,000 at Fuji Speedway meant learning to manage the pressure fast, all while picking up Japanese through Rosetta Stone and settling into a new culture. She posted a career-best 14th-place Sprint finish in her debut season and has kept climbing since, all while completing her degree in Global Business Management at RIT and earning the 2025 Gorsline Scholarship.
Off the track, Kelsey is building KelMic Racing into something bigger: a brand, a community, and a platform for the next generation of drivers who refuse to be told no.
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Where it all began: after years of chasing the feeling she first found in indoor karts as a kid, Kelsey enrolled at Bertil Roos Racing School in Florida, training under former British F1 driver Divina Galica. She spent the season building fundamentals with the Lucas Oil School of Racing alongside her coursework, learning to read a track before she ever raced one competitively. By year's end she'd earned her SCCA competition license — the credential that turned racing from a dream into something she could actually do. It was the first real proof this wasn't just a phase.
This was the year everything sped up. WEC LMGTE Am podium finisher Nic Jönsson of KDE Management took her on, bringing structure and a coach's eye to raw potential. Training got more focused — race craft, car control, the small habits that separate a driver who's fast from one who's fast and consistent. It marked the start of a partnership that's still shaping her career today.
Consistency became the theme: full-time training under Nic's guidance, stacked against a full course load at RIT. There were no dramatic headlines this year, just the repetition that builds a driver — more seat time, more feedback, more small corrections. Balancing a business degree with a racing career meant late nights and early mornings, but neither side got shortchanged. It was a quiet year that made the next ones possible.
Everything came together at Watkins Glen for her first-ever competition weekend with the SVRA — a vintage racing series where she campaigned a classic Mini Cooper, a different kind of car and a different kind of challenge from anything she'd trained in. She crossed the line in 7th, a result that mattered less than the experience of racing wheel-to-wheel for the first time. It was proof that everything from the coaching sessions could actually translate to a real grid. From here, the goals got bigger.
Her official series debut arrived in the Ligier JFC Series, run alongside her first starts in the Kyojo Cup — two series and two learning curves at once. Racing in Japan meant adjusting to a new culture, a new language, and a level of competition she hadn't faced before, all while trying to be fast enough to matter. Partway through the season she made the call to commit fully to the Kyojo Cup, betting on the series and the team that felt like the right long-term home. It was the year the path narrowed and the direction became clear.
Now in her second full season racing full-time for Team KCMG in the Kyojo Cup, chasing consistency at the front of the field and training harder than ever to get there. The season also brought a milestone crossover: a Formula E x Kyojo Cup E-Prix, with the series joining Formula E on Japan's Tokyo circuit for a rare shared weekend. It's the biggest stage she's raced on yet, and a sign of how far the series — and her career within it — has come. The goal for the rest of the year is simple: keep climbing toward the top step.