🏳️ Evan Close

Evan Close is a competitive amateur racing at club level, with a Racer Rating of 1,620. His record spans six seasons in American Endurance Racing from 2020 to 2026, yielding one win and nine podiums across ten starts. That concentration of results, a second-place average finish, indicates consistent performance in his chosen series rather than breadth across multiple categories. Close remains active as of 2026, though his most recent three rounds produced three podiums and a nineteenth-place finish, suggesting variability in recent form.[1]

Close's head-to-head record against his regular rivals shows him consistently ahead of semi-professional and amateur drivers at his own level. He has finished ahead of Carl Becker and Sam Keller in all four shared races each, and maintains positive records against Benny Chong, Michael Ferra, and Paul Wooding, the 2022 American Endurance Racing Class 3 champion. His most notable achievements come against stronger drivers stepped down from higher categories: he has beaten Alex Rubenstein, a three-time American Endurance Racing Class 4 champion, twice; and has single victories over Chris Walsh, the 2024 TC America TCX champion and a much stronger professional driver, and Malcolm Harrison, an FIA Silver graded sportscar driver. These isolated results represent occasions when Close rose to the standard of established professionals rather than a sustained pattern at that level.

Close's career, concentrated entirely in endurance racing, reflects the profile of a dedicated amateur finding consistent success within a specific discipline and field. His ability to occasionally beat drivers of considerably higher standing, combined with his regular podium finishes among competitors near his own rating, marks him as genuinely competitive within his category rather than merely present.