For someone who spends so much of their time looking ahead at the next turn, Canadian IndyCar driver Dalton Kellett doesn’t forget to look up and stare at the sky.
Not when he’s driving at nearly 200 mph in a race on a hot spring afternoon, of course. That would be too dangerous, for many obvious reasons.
But when he gets a chance to unwind away from the track, one of Kellett’s self-described ‘nerdy’ hobbies has been constructing a high-tech telescope with the help of his girlfriend, Nicole Westra.
“That’s been my little DIY project lately,” said Kellett, who drives a #4 Chevrolet vehicle.
The 27-year-old Kellett finished 23rd for Team AJ Foyt at this weekend’s Indy 500, his second go at the sport’s premiere event and an improvement on last year’s 31st place finish.
This year’s race set a new record for the fastest Indy 500 ever, with an average speed of the drivers at 306.886 km/h (190.690 mph).
In many ways, Kellett has got the hobbies of your average mid-20s active individual: rock climbing, hiking trails in BC, and just experiencing the outdoors as often as possible.
But ask anyone who’s met the engineering physics graduate of Kingston’s Queen’s University and they’ll tell you how methodical and dedicated he’s been to his racing craft for years, but also how he’s intensely invested in learning about, well, just about anything scientific.
He knows he has to be like that, though, in a sport and a lifestyle as technical as his. After…
