🇺🇾 Santi Urrutia

Santi Urrutia is a retired Uruguayan driver who competed primarily in Indy NXT between 2016 and 2018, where he established himself as a professional-level competitor with eight race wins and 24 podium finishes across 50 starts. His Racer Rating of 4,925 places him in the professional band; he won the 2016 Indy NXT championship and finished third in the final season of his career in 2018. Urrutia's record was built on consistent performance against a competitive field that included several drivers graded at the professional level or above by the FIA, and he demonstrated the ability to beat significantly stronger drivers on occasion: he finished ahead of Pato O'Ward, an elite professional rated 7,265, on six occasions, and Felix Rosenqvist, another elite professional rated 6,565, also six times. His most frequent rival was Dalton Kellett, against whom Urrutia compiled a 37-13 advantage across their 50 shared races; he also ran competitive head-to-head records against Neil Alberico and Shelby Blackstock, both semi-professionals, and held his own against Colton Herta, a Platinum-graded professional, finishing ahead of him 15 times in 33 shared races despite a net losing record.[1]

Urrutia began his career in single-seaters with a 2014 season in GP3 Series, where he started 15 races with Koiranen GP but scored no wins or podiums, finishing well down the field in a stronger international series. He then moved to Indy NXT with Belardi Auto Racing, the team that would define his career. Over three seasons with Belardi he won races every year, with his best return coming in 2018 when he took two victories and eight podiums in 17 rounds to secure third in the championship. His average finishing position of 7.1 across all 65 career starts reflects a driver who was competitive but not dominant; he spent most of his career in the mid-field or upper-mid-field of professional grids, occasionally breaking through against stronger opposition but more typically racing among peers. His status changed to retired after 2018.[2]