🏳️ John Hotz

John Hotz is a competitive amateur racing driver with a Racer Rating of 2,794, placing him in the club racing tier where real competition occurs against genuine licence holders but outside the professional ranks. His six-season career from 2021 to 2026 spans 154 starts across SCCA regional and major events, with 34 wins and 76 podiums. He won the 2024 SCCA Regionals SM championship and remains active, finishing third in the 2026 SCCA Regionals with 5 wins across 11 rounds.[1]

Hotz's record reveals a driver who dominates the regional level but struggles significantly when promoted to major events. In SCCA Regionals across five seasons he accumulated 34 wins and 75 podiums from 118 starts, winning more than a quarter of his races. Against SCCA Majors competition over the same span, however, he managed only a single podium from 36 starts, indicating a substantial performance gap between those categories. His average finishing position of P7.8 across all racing reflects this split; the regional wins mask consistent mid-pack finishes in stronger fields. His most frequent rivals are fellow regional-level drivers: he holds decisive head-to-head records against Michael Cohen, Michael LaMaina, James Roberts, and others in the semi-professional to club tiers, finishing ahead of them in the vast majority of shared races.

Hotz has occasionally raced against significantly stronger drivers, though these remain isolated results rather than established patterns. He finished ahead of FIA Gold graded Matthew Payne twice and Formula 1 World Champion James Hunt five times across their respective shared races, but such results appear to stem from circumstantial circumstances rather than competitive dominance. His profile is that of a capable regional racer whose strength lies in the SCCA Regionals formula; promotion to major competition or higher-tier series would require substantial improvement to remain competitive.