🇺🇸 Bacon Zelenka

Bacon Zelenka is a semi-professional driver who competed in single-seater racing for two seasons, from 2023 to 2024, accumulating 31 starts across US F4 and the Ligier JS F4 Series. His Racer Rating of 3,012 places him among semi-professional competitors; drivers at this level win in pro-am and one-make classes and typically run mid-pack in fields of full professionals. Zelenka scored two wins and six podiums across his career, with his record showing material improvement from his first season to his second; he managed a single podium finish across 18 starts in US F4 during 2023, then won twice and reached the podium five times in thirteen Ligier JS F4 starts in 2024.[1]

Zelenka's record against his peers reveals a driver who typically finished in the middle of competitive fields rather than at the front. Across his 31 races he averaged a finishing position of P10.1. He struggled significantly against the strongest rivals in his shared races; against professional-level drivers such as Titus Sherlock, a former champion and FIA Silver graded driver, and Patrick Woods-Toth, a two-time champion, Zelenka finished ahead only once and twice respectively in eighteen-race heads-to-head records against each. His more consistent competitive advantage lay against semi-professional fields: he finished ahead of Christopher Parrish, a competitive amateur driver, twelve times in nineteen shared races. A single result is insufficient to establish a pattern, but Zelenka did record individual victories over stronger drivers including Max Taylor and Titus Sherlock, suggesting occasional capability at a higher level.

Zelenka's career was brief and ended during the 2024 season. His improvement in the Ligier JS F4 Series, where he showed sufficient pace to win races, came against established rivals such as Kekai Hauanio, though Zelenka finished behind Hauanio in the vast majority of their encounters. The driver raced primarily for Bacon Racing, a single-car team with no wins on record beyond his own efforts.