New York · Carmel, IN · The Road to Indy

Griffin Yellin

Driver / Race Engineer / Data
Discipline
Formula 4 · USF Pro
Engineering
MTS · DAG Graduate
Sim
Eclipse Competition
Training
PitFit Daily
Scroll · The Story
Sebring International Raceway Road America Indianapolis Motor Speedway Portland International Raceway The Thermal Club Putnam Park Sebring International Raceway Road America Indianapolis Motor Speedway Portland International Raceway The Thermal Club Putnam Park
00 The Story
2022 — Present
From grief to the grid

A driver built in a cockpit. An engineer built in the data.

Born and raised in New York City, I found racing in 2022 — a refuge from the grief of losing my father. What started as escape became obsession, then discipline, then career.

Four years later I've competed on the Road to Indy ladder with Jay Howard Driver Development, tested with ENVE Motorsports in USF Pro, and graduated the Motorsport Technical School's DAG track as a Performance Engineer. I'm now in Carmel, Indiana, living and breathing the sport from both sides of the garage wall — building the car, driving the car, reading its data, and chasing the only goal that still matters: a professional seat on the way to the NTT INDYCAR Series, and becoming the first Puerto Rican to do so.

Fact Sheet

  • BornNew York City
  • BasedCarmel, Indiana
  • EducationDalton · MTS DAG
  • Seat TimeF4 · USF · SIM
  • GoalNTT INDYCAR
01Skip Barber Racing School — The Beginning2023 — 2024
Chapter One

Learn to drive.

Skip Barber Formula Series · Car #30

Sebring was where the helmet went on for the first time — and where I decided not to take it off. A year after losing my dad, I walked into Skip Barber with no ladder-series background and every reason to feel out of place. The paddock didn't care. The car didn't care. Every lap I got better, and every session the grief got quieter.

Skip Barber's formula curriculum taught me the fundamentals — braking cadence, rotation, reference points, racecraft — and gave me a full season of wheel-to-wheel across some of the hardest circuits in the country. By the end of it, this wasn't therapy anymore. It was a career.

Series
Skip Barber Formula
Car
Formula 4 · #30
Seasons
2023 — 2024
Sebring Intl.NOLA Motorsports ParkCircuit of the AmericasVIRRoad AmericaLime Rock Park
Sebring — car #30
Sebring
Skip Barber paddock
Skip Barber Racing School · F4 · 2023–24
The story, in my own words

Watch the why.

Griffin Yellin · A racing storySound on
02Jay Howard Driver Development — The LadderJHDD2024 — 2025
Chapter Two

Road to Indy.

USF Pro Championships · #7 JHDD

Jay Howard Driver Development put me on the ladder. Road America in the rain. The IMS Combine under empty grandstands. Portland, Putnam, Mid-Ohio, NOLA — a field of drivers every bit as hungry as me. For the first time I wasn't a student, I was a racing driver with a data engineer, a setup sheet, and a qualifying session that mattered.

What I took from JHDD is something every real ladder team teaches you by force: how to communicate. How to turn a feeling in Turn 5 into a spring rate on a sheet of paper. How to sit down after the session and defend your in-car reasoning to an engineer who has three sessions of data to disagree with you. That loop — feel, data, conversation, change, lap — is the loop I still run today, just from the other side of the desk.

Team
JHDD
Series
USF Pro Champ.
Role
Driver
Putnam ParkRoad AmericaPortland Intl.Indianapolis Motor SpeedwayMid-OhioNOLA Motorsports Park
Road America
IMS
Portland
Road America
Road America · IMS · Portland · JHDD USF Pro · 2024–25
IRP Oval spotter
IRP Oval
IMS Combine
Road America
"The driver-engineer loop started here." — IRP Oval, May 2025
Role · Spotter

Trackside, one weekend.

USF Pro Championships · IRP Oval · May 2025

In May 2025 I stayed with JHDD as spotter for the IRP Oval round — calling car position and incident data live to the driver and engineering stand. Standing above an oval rewires how you see racing: you stop watching cars and you start watching space. It's a skill I now apply to every coaching job I take and every strategy call I make from the pit box.

Station
Trackside
Event
IRP Oval · May '25
Comms-to
Driver + Eng. Stand
03ENVE Motorsports — USF Pro Test & Coaching2024 — 2025
Chapter Three

Test. Develop. Repeat.

ENVE Motorsports · Thermal Club

As Test Driver for ENVE Motorsports, I spent 2024 and 2025 doing the work most people don't see: multi-session days at The Thermal Club, running structured setup sweeps and delivering the kind of feedback an engineering team can actually build on. Damper changes. Ride-height deltas. Aero balance. Tire-temp windows. Session after session.

Thermal taught me precision. You don't get points for a hero lap in a test — you get points for a clean, repeatable lap that isolates one variable. In May 2025 I joined the ENVE USF Pro program as a driver coach at the IRP Oval, bringing driver insight back to the pit stand for a full race weekend. Both seats. Same car. Same sport.

Role
Test Driver · Coach
Program
USF Pro
Venues
Thermal · IRP Oval
Thermal
Thermal
Thermal
Thermal
The Thermal Club · ENVE Motorsports Test Program · 2024–25
04Motorsport Technical School — Race Engineer2025 — 2026
Lead Race Engineer · DAG Graduate

The other side of the wall.

I graduated the Motorsport Technical School's DAG (Data Acquisition & Analysis) track yesterday, April 18, 2026, in Carmel, Indiana — an intensive race-engineering program covering data acquisition, vehicle dynamics, tire science, aero balance, suspension, powertrain analysis and race strategy on the Ligier JSF4 platform.

I led the team as Race Engineer for our F4 track day at Putnam Park: I rebuilt and reorganized the wiring loom and harness on the Ligier JSF4, serviced all engine and chassis connectors, contributed directly to a full engine swap, and monitored HPD engine parameters during first crank. I sourced the full technical manual library (HPD, Sadev, JRi, AIM, Tilton, GEMS) and worked directly with manufacturers through my personal industry network to resolve engineering questions in real time.

I also built the team's entire engineering document stack from scratch in Excel — run plan, setup sheet, driver procedure, lap tracker, tire tracker, engine break-in tracker, spare parts manifest, and driver feedback sheet — plus a live setup configuration app at gysetupconfig.netlify.app.

MTS · race engineering
MTS · Ligier JSF4
MTS · engine swap
MTS · Putnam Park
Motorsport Technical School · DAG · Ligier JSF4 · Putnam Park
Data & DAQ

GEMS ECU · Cosworth Pi Toolbox · AIM Systems · data & math channels · iRacing · custom tool development

Vehicle Dynamics

Tire science · suspension setup · aero balance · powertrain · race strategy · LSTM bicycle model

Mech. & Electrical

Engine build · wiring harness · connector service · ECU startup · HPD F4 · Ligier JSF4

Systems

PC hardware (CPU/GPU) · sim rig build · Microsoft Suite · PitFit daily training (IndyCar level)

05Eclipse Competition — Elite Sim RacingPRESENT
Active Engineer

Setup work for elite sim teams.

Off the physical grid, I'm a setup engineer for Eclipse Competition — an elite sim-racing team competing at the top of iRacing. My job: develop, test and validate the setups that put Eclipse drivers on the front row of the hardest online series in motorsport.

Eclipse is not a bedroom roster. The lineup is built almost entirely of real-world racers — people who know what a car is actually doing on track and can give the kind of feedback an engineer can build on. That's the reason the setup work matters here: it's the same DAQ, the same tire-model questions, the same damper-vs-spring conversations — just with a different telemetry pipe. Every hour here feeds directly into the real-world engineering I do at the track, and vice versa.

Eclipse Competition
06Why I Race — ExCampsEXPERIENCE CAMPS
This is the why.

ExCamps gave me the tools to grieve when no one else was — and they do it for thousands of young people across the country.

Racing gave me somewhere to put the grief. ExCamps gave me the permission to feel it first. If any part of my story resonates with you, this is where that story actually starts.

Visit ExperienceCamps.org

A Cause I Stand Behind

No young person should grieve alone.

Experience Camps is a free, one-week program for kids who've lost someone close to them. After my father passed in 2022, they were the first place where I didn't have to explain what I was feeling. Racing is the result. This is the origin.

If you're a potential sponsor or partner, I donate a portion of every sponsorship contribution to ExCamps. Details on request.

07Let's talk — Sponsors · Partners · TeamsCARMEL, IN
Open for sponsorship, engineering, coaching

Build something with me.

Driver, race engineer and data specialist. Based in Carmel, Indiana. Available for seats, engineering roles, test days, coaching, sim-team contracts and sponsor partnerships. The fastest way to reach me is email.

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