🇺🇸 Reece Ushijima

Reece Ushijima was a professional single-seater driver competing across European and North American championships from 2020 to 2023. He raced for Hitech Grand Prix in GB3, a single-class series open to amateurs and professionals, then moved to Van Amersfoort Racing for his season in the international FIA Formula 3 Championship, a multiclass grid that also mixed amateurs with graded professionals. His final indexed season came in 2023 in USF Pro 2000, an American single-seater series, with Jay Howard Driver Development.[1]

Ushijima's record comprised 64 starts across his four indexed seasons. In GB3, where he spent the bulk of his time, he took two wins and nine podiums from 43 starts for Hitech Grand Prix, a team that fielded elite professionals including Formula 1 driver Isack Hadjar. His step up to international Formula 3 in 2022 proved harder; he managed one podium from 18 starts against a field mixing European semi-professionals with internationally graded drivers. His final appearance came in USF Pro 2000, where he scored one podium across three rounds and finished twelfth in the championship standings.[2]

The company he kept throughout his career spoke to a driver solidly within the professional band. He was closely matched against Bart Horsten, a semi-professional regular in both GB3 and British F4, and against Kush Maini, an established professional on the FIA Silver scale who had raced Formula 2 and competed extensively in the same GB3 grid. More tellingly, Ushijima finished ahead of Isack Hadjar, an elite professional and Formula 1 driver, five times across their shared races, and beat 2022 Formula 3 champion Oliver Bearman on four occasions, though both of those drivers regularly finished well ahead of him in their head-to-head meetings.