Myles Rowe is very direct about the undeniably major stakes for his rookie season in Indy NXT.
One rung below the NTT IndyCar Series, a strong showing possibly could put him on the starting grid of the Indianapolis 500 next season as a full-time driver.
“That’s my personal plan, yes,” Rowe said last month shortly before the season opener at St. Petersburg. “I don’t know what all my support has in store for me, but that is my personal plan. If I have the proper year, and I show the skill, I think I’ll be ready for IndyCar next year, no doubt.”
And if he can win the championship – and an expected scholarship of nearly seven figures – the situation will take care of itself.
“Oh yeah, for sure,” Rowe, 23, said with a smile. “Yeah, no reason to run Indy NXT twice if I win the championship!”
In his compelling journey to become the third Black driver to race the Indy 500 (joining Willy T. Ribbs and George Mack), Rowe took another big step in 2024 by joining HMD Motorsports in the No. 99 Force Indy entry.
He landed the new ride just days after winning the USF Pro 2000 championship and a $664,500 Discount Tire Driver Development scholarship that was earmarked for his promotion to Indy NXT on the Road to Indy ladder.
Rowe also has kept the support of Penske Entertainment’s Race for Equity and Change initiative, which was launched three years ago to increase diversity and inclusion in motorsports. He was among the first beneficiaries as he was placed with a USF2000 ride at Force Indy in 2021 and became the series’ first Black winner.
But he lost the ride in 2022 and spent much of 2022 in a scramble to secure funding to run with Pabst Racing.
Rowe, an avid photographer who graduated from Pace University last year with a film and screen studies degree, also stayed immersed in the IndyCar community by working as a video intern for the CoForce digital media production agency.
He scraped together enough support to run the full USF2000 season, and though he came up just short of the title in 2022, his results propelled him to the next rung in USF Pro 2000.
Rowe laughs when reflecting on his CoForce side gig and the former co-workers who now are shooting him on track (and allo were during this interview at St. Pete).
“Yeah, it’s crazy, man,” he said. “It’s crazy full circle looking back to it. It’s very surreal. I’m very grateful for (CoForce CEO) Jonny Baker for allowing me to be an intern because I just wanted to make some films. I didn’t understand this company would allow me to really connect with all these individuals in the paddock. I didn’t even think about that until after I was in it. And I was realizing, ‘Oh, I’m meeting all these people now,’ and it’s really made my experience in the sport a lot better.
“Because now when I walk through the track, I know a lot more people just from working as an employee for a company. It also helped show me the other side of not being a racing driver, which I think is very important to know what everyone else around the paddock is kind of doing. That helps me kind of be more empathetic to people and just understand the flow a lot better and be able to communicate well.”
While he remains focused on filmmaking in his spare time (dabbling in directing, as well as candid shoots with friends), Rowe also has adjusted to life on a bigger team.
HMD Motorsports will field nine of the 21 cars in Sunday morning’s race at Barber Motorsports Park (11:15 a.m. ET, Peacock). Rowe finished eighth in his debut last month in the St. Petersburg season opener (which was won by teammate Nolan Siegel, who also is racing part time in IndyCar this year).
Having gotten a later start than many of his peers (the big break came when Will Power happened to notice Rowe’s impressive lap times as a 14-year-old), Rowe had limited experience with teammates and what to expect.
“I thought it was going to be like really difficult and hard to kind of mesh with everybody,” Rowe said. “I tend to be more reserved when I’m around my teammates and everything, but Pabst kind of brought me out of my shell over the last two years, and it’s actually a lot easier to work with all the crew and personnel. It’s a big operation, but it’s not it’s not as difficult as you think. It’s quite enjoyable.”
He also has a better mental approach, which he credited to Bob Perona, his driving coach the past two years at Pabst Racing.
“We spent a lot of time trying to stop myself from overthinking and processing so much information in the car,” Rowe said. “I kind of had the speed already but what really got it honed in for me was overthinking less.
“And Bob Perona really helped me stop doing that so much. I think that was really the key because I’m one of those guys who’s thinking all these different planes and dimensions … reference markers and all these stupid things. He kind of put it in words of basically, ‘Drive just like a knucklehead.’ I still don’t do that, but it kind of got me in the direction where I needed to be in order to just drive more purely.”
Of course, it’s difficult to keep the big on-track moments in check with an Indy 500 opportunity tantalizingly within reach. But Rowe also is motivated by the bigger picture.
“I’m going to do my best to try to make sure that the ladder keeps bringing up diverse individuals,” he said. “I think we can bring more people up for sure.”
