🇺🇸 Derek Welch

Derek Welch is a Bronze-graded amateur competing in national solo sprint racing in the United States. He races primarily in NASA's multiclass championship, where he runs German cars in the GTS2 and Spec E30 classes, and has made one appearance in the 24H Series, an international multiclass endurance championship where he shared a GT4 car in the SP3-GT4 class.[1]

Over 16 years of indexed racing from 2005 to 2021, Welch took one win and twelve podiums across 45 starts. The bulk of his record comes from NASA, where he competed in 44 races across multiple classes over a 17-year span. His single victory came in that series. His most recent season, in 2021, saw him race two NASA rounds and finish 64th in the championship standings. He spent the majority of his NASA career with a single team operation that fielded him for 32 of his starts.[2]

Welch's record places him among club-level drivers who race regularly against semi-professionals and stronger amateurs. He consistently finished ahead of Bennett McMicking, a club driver with 153 NASA starts, and ran closely matched with Scott Neville, a developing-level driver from 61 starts. He beat semi-professional Bronze-graded drivers Aristotle Balogh and Sean Quinlan on multiple occasions, with three wins against Balogh and four against Quinlan across their shared NASA races.