🇺🇸 Mike Kaeske

Mike Kaeske competed as a semi-professional driver in single-seater racing, holding a Racer Rating of 3,341. This places him in the semi-professional band, meaning he raced at the entry end of professional fields but finished well off the pace of full-time competitors. His career spans two seasons, 2004 to 2005, with eight starts in the Star Mazda Championship, a series that fielded drivers across a range of abilities.[1]

Kaeske's record shows consistent difficulty against the field. He completed all eight races but never finished on the podium and averaged a finishing position of 28th. Against his most frequent rivals, a group of professional and semi-professional drivers, he ran behind the pace: he finished behind Ryan Justice five times in eight shared races, behind Luis Schiavo six times in eight, and behind Rafa Matos eight times in eight. Matos went on to win the 2005 Star Mazda Championship that season and later claimed multiple national titles. Jenkins and Ross Smith, both semi-professionals with slightly higher ratings, finished ahead of Kaeske in every one of their eight shared races. He managed occasional results against stronger drivers, notably finishing ahead of Gold-graded professional Bryan Sellers once and mark Wilkins, the 2019 IMSA Pilot Challenge champion, once, but these were isolated moments in an otherwise difficult campaign. Kaeske raced for Blueacre Motorsports throughout, a team that fielded multiple drivers but recorded no wins during the period on record.