🏳️ Michael Palaszynski

Michael Palaszynski is a competitive amateur racer with a Racer Rating of 1,774, placing him in the club racing band. This means he operates at the front of club-level competition; he holds a real racing licence and competes in genuine contested fields, though these are not professional series. His record spans four seasons from 2022 to 2025 across two categories of competition, with 25 starts, 4 wins, and 7 podiums overall, averaging a finishing position of fifth.[1]

The bulk of Palaszynski's success came early in his career through American Endurance Racing, where he made 5 starts in 2022 and 2023 and took 4 wins and 5 podiums; this series appears to favour his strengths in longer-distance racing. He has since shifted his primary focus to SCCA Regionals racing, accumulating 20 starts across 2024 and 2025. In the more frequent SCCA format, he has recorded 2 podiums but no wins, finishing fifth overall in the 2025 season after 12 rounds. His record against the regulars in SCCA Regionals tells a clear story: he has been outpaced substantially by Bryan McCrea, the two-time Regionals BIT champion, finishing behind him in 19 of their 20 shared races, but has dominated competition at his own level, finishing ahead of developing drivers in the same fields and occasionally ahead of established professionals on their off days. He has beaten professional-level drivers including Hunt McMAHON and Johan Schwartz, a former NASA champion, and shown competitive moments against stronger mid-field runners, though these are isolated results rather than patterns of sustained advantage.