Before he could read, Miles Maroney could drive.
Before he lost his baby teeth, he was making a name for himself regionally in go-kart racing. And before he could vote, Maroney was traveling to Malaysia to compete in Asia’s largest sports car endurance race—and finishing second.
Now, at 20, Maroney is still one of the youngest professional sports car drivers in the world.
“Racing has always been in the family in one way or another,” said Maroney. “My grandfather, father and uncle all used to race motorcycles in the desert.”
Miles’ father, Michael, could see a race car driver “from the first moment he got into a little red Lamborghini at Toys-R-Us, at age 3.” So he introduced Miles to go-karts.
“When he was done that first day, “ his father said, “he asked if he could do it again. I thought, uh-oh, here we go. Some people have a special talent in their family, a Tiger Woods in their family. I have a Miles Maroney.”
Maroney grew up in Topanga and attended Calabasas High School. As a kid, he played soccer and threw the baseball around in the backyard, but it was clear early on what fired his passion.
“When my dad decided I should have a shot at driving go-karts just to see if I liked it, liked the speed, it just snowballed. I loved it from the first day and it just took off from there,” said Maroney.
Within a year, he was in his first race and, shortly after, was winning them consistently. Every year, “it just ramped up,” he said— more powerful machines, tougher competition, more victories, more accolades. Modern kart racing is not kids’ stuff, although competitive racing is limited to drivers under 17. The fastest karts can reach 160 mph.
“Some people considered it the ‘Golden Age’ of karting,” Maroney said. “I got to battle it out with the best of the best. I was right in the center of it.”
Always, he won. That kept him moving.
“If I had stopped winning, I would have stopped racing right there,” he said. “I didn’t see it as work. I didn’t dread the travel. I got most of the enjoyment out of the success I had, but I still just loved being behind the wheel. It was very comforting, very natural.”
“More times than not,” Michael Maroney, an attorney, said, “we came away with the big trophy.”
By 15, Maroney was ready to move up. He had always dreamed of racing in the formula racing’s highest series in America, Indy Car. But first he needed experience, so in 2010 he joined the Formula Ford team in the prestigious Pacific F2000 Series, a stepping-stone to Indy Car.
After breaking through with a victory in his sixth race, Maroney never finished lower than second the rest of the season en route to being named the circuit’s “Rookie of the Year.”
The next year, he transitioned into sports car racing—i.e., driving Porsches rather than the exotic-looking formula racecars. He finished fifth at the Long Beach Grand Prix with his co-driver, becoming at age 17 the youngest driver ever to compete in an American LeMans Series event in the two-hour race, where speeds reach 195 mph. (That same year, he flew 9,000 miles to Malaysia, where he and two other drivers finished second in a 12-hour endurance race on the Sepang F1 circuit.)
Maroney’s Long Beach performance earned him three races in 2012 on a similar circuit, the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Series, where he notched third, fourth and fifth place finishes—an amazing achievement for someone who had never raced in a closed-wheel car before, where the brake is used by a different foot, has a clutch and a roof overhead.
“Now he is considered one of the up-and-coming racers,” his father said. “He’s unusually positioned to be one of the brightest stars in racing.”
While he wouldn’t say no to racing the Indy 500 someday, the current challenge has Maroney fired up for the future.
“The Indy cars, you can jump in one, then another and they are basically the same,” he said. “The NASCAR cars are bigger, they’re loud. But there’s a difference in sports car racing when someone is driving a Porsche and someone is driving a BMW. I was hesitant at first, but the sports cars truly are a lot of fun.”
