Elton Julian

Elton Julian (born August 16, 1974) is an American professional racing driver and racing team owner born in the Canary Islands of Spain. He grew up in Ecuador and the United States. He speaks English, French and Spanish fluently.

Julian began his racing career in Southern California at age 13, racing go karts before moving on to Formula Ford at the Skip Barber Racing School where he won 36 races from 49 starts and four championships in 1990.

In 1992, he raced in the British Formula 3 Championship for the Alan Docking Racing and Fortec Motorsport teams finishing 8th in the championship with one pole position and one win, becoming the youngest winner in series history. That same year he also competed in the Indy Lights series at Vancouver and finished 8th. In 1993, he raced in the French Formula Three Championship and finished third in the drivers championship for the Formula Project team.

In 1994, Julian signed a multi-year test and reserve driver contract with the French Larrousse Formula One team, completing several tests at Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet, France. In his first test he was over half a second faster than regular driver Érik Comas and Julian was considered a potential candidate for a race seat in 1995. However, the Larrousse team closed its doors for financial reasons just before the start of the 1995 season despite last minute attempts to save the squad by the F3000 racing team DAMS and other interested parties.

In preparation for his testing duties with Larrousse, Julian entered the FIA International Formula 3000 series for three races in 1994 and made his debut at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium for the Omegaland team. He competed in the remaining races of the 1994 International Formula 3000 season and finished 13th in France at Magny-Cours. He returned to Europe for the 1996 International Formula 3000 season and competed full-time for Nordic Racing. The season was not particularly successful as the team failed to come to grips with the all new Lola chassis and Julian only broke into the points at the final race of the season at the Hockenheimring in Germany with a fifth-place result. He finished 14th in the championship. In 1997 he tested a Formula Nippon car at the Suzuka Circuit in Japan and was offered a contract for the following season but a lack of funding kept him out of racing until 1999 when he made two Atlantic Championship starts for the PDR team resulting in a fifth-place finish at Long Beach and a DNF in Montreal.

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