Spanish racer Pepe Massot will become the youngest driver on the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup grid at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas this coming weekend, 1st/2nd November, when the 18-year-old makes his race debut in the FIA Formula One World Championship support category.

Barcelona-born Massot, who graduated into the Porsche Carrera Cup GB Championship midway through 2014 after beginning the year in the UK-based Michelin Ginetta GT4 SuperCup, will contest the final two rounds of the Porsche Supercup campaign with the MOMO-Megatron team

With aspirations of competing in the blue riband Porsche series full-time in 2015, Massot jumped at the chance to join Andreas Laberle’s MOMO-backed squad for the upcoming races in Austin and is relishing the prospect of competing in the Supercup, as well as America, for the first time.

“This is an amazing opportunity for me, I really want to say a big thank you to my sponsors and to Andreas at MOMO-Megatron – he’s a great guy and has given me a really fantastic chance”, said the teenage Spaniard, “My aim is to become a professional racing driver as soon as I can, so making my debut in Porsche Supercup in Austin with a top team is an opportunity we had to take.

“I’m really looking forward to racing in America for the first time, it’s going to be a big weekend for the Supercup with the Formula One – there’s no GP2 or GP3 so there will be even more focus given to the Porsche races. Austin is a really great track, I can’t wait to get out there!”

Since his car racing debut in the 2012 Ginetta Junior Championship, aged just 15, the Spaniard has made a huge impact on the British motor racing scene. After only a single year in Juniors, where he was the top Rookie with two outright wins, Massot stepped-up into the Ginetta GT Supercup for the following season where he won on the opening weekend and eventually ended the year fifth overall.

Becoming a Pro-Am 1 Class winner in his first Porsche Carrera Cup GB race this year at Croft in June, Massot went on to secure an outright podium finish during the weekend’s second encounter, as well as his second Pro-Am 1 victory, before stepping-up into the full ‘Pro’ class when the season resumed at Snetterton in August. He went on to end the season with three overall top three finishes.

The build-up to Massot’s Porsche Supercup debut starts today, Monday, 27th October, when he travels from his family home in Spain to the UK where he will spend Tuesday, 28th October, putting in some important mileage on the simulator at Base Performance in Banbury with experienced Porsche racer Nick Tandy. From there, he will fly out to Dallas on Wednesday, 29th October.

“If I haven’t done 10,000 laps on the simulator already then I haven’t done any!”, added Massot, “I have been practicing really hard, some qualifying runs, some race runs, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to prepare as well as I can. We’ll do some more work on the sim with Nick [Tandy] on Tuesday, I really want to make the most of this opportunity and then we can see what happens for 2015.”

Officially timed practice in Austin will take place at 16.00 (local time) on Friday, 31st October, with qualifying and the first Porsche Supercup race of the weekend following on Saturday, 1st November, at 11.30 (local time) and 16.00 (local time) respectively. On Sunday, 2nd November, race two is set to get underway at 11.30 (local time).