A Belgian driver with a Champ Car fifth at Cleveland, a third-place Rolex 24 finish and a 2021 season that brought two championships and the Porsche Cup.
Belgian driver Jan Heylen, now based in Tampa, Florida, raced in Formula Ford, Formula 3, Champ Car and sports cars. He won two driver championships in 2021, in Michelin Pilot Challenge and GT World Challenge America.
Jan Heylen is a Belgian racing driver based in Tampa, Florida, who has competed in karts, Formula cars, Champ Car and a long run of sports car series. His best-known results came in North American endurance and GT racing, including a podium at the 2014 Rolex 24 and two driver championships in 2021. He also spent time as a race director in the Mazda Road to Indy.
Who is Jan Heylen?
Jan Heylen was born on 1 May 1980 in Belgium. He began karting in 1992 and climbed through British and German single-seater series before moving into sports cars in 2005. He now lives in Tampa, Florida, and has raced on two continents across open-wheel, endurance and GT events.
Heylen's career covers several disciplines, from single-seaters to touring and GT racing. Few seasons were continuous; many of his years were built from partial programmes with different teams.
A Belgian driver whose path ran from Formula Ford to Champ Car, then to IMSA endurance racing and two championships in 2021.
How did Heylen start in racing?
Heylen started karting in 1992 and moved through a series of feeder championships. He raced in the British Formula Ford Winter Series in 2000 and the British Formula Ford Championship in 2001, then the UK Formula Ford Zetec Championship in 2002. That year he won the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch.
From there he moved into Formula 3 in Spain and the Euro series in 2003, then German Formula 3 in 2004. That German campaign ended with a third-place championship finish, built on six victories and eight podiums.
The same year he also drove the opening four Formula 3000 races of the season for Team Astromega. He was then replaced by Olivier Tielemans, and he went back to German Formula 3 for the rest of the year.
What were his sports car years in Europe?
Heylen added sports cars to his programme in 2005, the same year he won the Eurocup Megane Trophy title with seven wins. That season he also won the 24 Hours of Zolder with the Selleslagh Racing Team, which marked the start of a long run of endurance results in Belgium and the Netherlands.
In 2006 he took part in a one-off Belcar GT race at Spa-Francorchamps and won it. In 2008 he returned to Zolder and to the Belcar series with AD Sport, sharing the team with Laurens Vanthoor, who later became a Porsche factory driver.
The 2009 season was harder. He retired from the 24 Hours of Zolder with AD Sport, then finished fourth at Spa with Prospeed Competition. These results were not enough to build a title push in Europe, so his focus moved elsewhere.
In 2011 he returned to Prospeed Competition with co-driver Petri Lappalainen. Together they collected four top-ten results across twelve rounds, peaking with seventh at Zandvoort. That closed his full-season work in European sports cars.
What happened in Champ Car?
Heylen raced in the Champ Car World Series in 2006 and 2007 for Dale Coyne Racing and Conquest Racing. His best result came at the Cleveland Grand Prix in 2006, where he finished fifth, which was also the team's best result up to that point in the series.
In 2006 he won the seat at Dale Coyne Racing ahead of Nicky Pastorelli, The seat came with backing from the Muermans Group and BergHOFF Worldwide. Cristiano da Matta was his teammate, and Heylen finished the season fourteenth in the standings.
Heylen had no seat for the first three races of 2007. Conquest Racing then signed him as a stand-in for Matt Halliday, starting at round four. At TT Circuit Assen he took second, the team's best finish at that stage, but Nelson Philippe took over for the last two rounds.
A 2009 Indy Lights deal with Team E never produced a single appearance on track. The 2010 Indy Lights opener at St. Petersburg gave him second, behind the rookie Jean-Karl Vernay.
Early North American sports car seasons
Heylen started in North America in 2008, opening with two Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series races. The highlight was the 24 Hours of Daytona in a Synergy Racing Porsche 911 in the GT class, where the team finished sixth in class alongside Mark Greenberg, Damien Faulkner and Lance Arnold.
The 2011 programme included a Daytona 24 drive for Starworks Motorsport, plus six FIA GT3 European Championship starts with Prospeed Competition. Those efforts left him 27th in the points standings.
The 2012 calendar was a patchwork: one Trans-Am race in the GGT class, two Continental Tire events in a Dodge Challenger, three Rolex GT races in a Dodge Viper, a single LMP2 start for Conquest Endurance in the American Le Mans Series and one Pirelli World Challenge round.
In 2013 he raced most of the American Le Mans Series season with Mike Hedlund in a JDX Porsche. The pair reached the podium at Lime Rock Park, in downtown Baltimore and at the Petit Le Mans held at Road Atlanta.
What did his IMSA years look like?
Heylen's IMSA career took shape in 2014, when the Grand-Am and American Le Mans series merged into one championship. He ran almost the full season with Snow Racing, in a Porsche entered by Wright Motorsports; only the Twelve Hours of Sebring was missed, where he drove for RumBum Racing.
The 2014 Rolex 24 at Daytona was the standout. The team had received the car only weeks before the race, Despite that short preparation, the No. 58 entry held a top-five place for the whole event. Heylen, Madison Snow and Marco Seefried finished third, and the team was one of two GTD entries running with only three drivers.
Snow and Heylen were on the podium again at Road America, and at the Petit Le Mans finale Patrick Dempsey joined them as a third driver. In 2015 Heylen ran four races for Wright, and the Rolex 24 brought another podium, this time alongside Dempsey and Phillip Eng.
In 2016 he took part in one event. In 2017 he joined Wright for a full season in the Sprint X GT class of Pirelli World Challenge, partnering Michael Schein. The pair won three races, finished on the podium seven times and placed second in both the team and driver championships.
He also raced three IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship events that year with TRG and Park Place Motorsports. His best finish was fifth at the Long Beach Grand Prix.
The 2021 championship season
2021 was the peak of his career. In the Michelin Pilot Challenge he signed for a full season with Ryan Hardwick in the No. 16 Porsche run by Wright Motorsports. The car won the first of its three races at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca after a run of five podium finishes.
The title was settled at the Road America finale. Aggressive racing by a rival BMW took that car out of contention, and the Wright Porsche went on to win. Wright Motorsports took the team championship, and Heylen won the driver title alongside Hardwick.
In IMSA's WeatherTech SportsCar Championship he shared the GTD-class No. 16 car with Patrick Long and Trent Hindman for the four endurance races. They took second at the Twelve Hours of Sebring and fifth at Petit Le Mans, which secured the 2021 Michelin Endurance Cup.
In GT World Challenge America he went back to car No. 20 with Fred Poordad for a full campaign, finishing in the top five in every one of the thirteen races. The pair won the drivers' championship, and the team won the Team Championship.
The nine titles of 2021 also brought Heylen the Porsche Cup, awarded each year to the most successful privately entered Porsche driver since 1970. The trophy came with a new Porsche sports car, and in December Wright announced another full IMSA season with Hardwick.
Race direction and later roles
Heylen also worked on the management side of motorsport.
A television documentary, Racing Under Green, followed that 2008 season. By 2019 he had moved into management, taking the Race Director post for USF2000 in Mazda's Road to Indy ladder. He currently lives in Tampa, Florida.
Career highlights by series
| Period | Series | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Formula Ford Festival | Winner at Brands Hatch |
| 2004 | German Formula 3 | Third in the championship, six wins |
| 2005 | Eurocup Megane Trophy | Champion, seven wins |
| 2006 | Champ Car World Series | Fifth at the Cleveland Grand Prix |
| 2007 | Champ Car (Conquest Racing) | Second at TT Circuit Assen |
| 2014 | Rolex 24 at Daytona | Third overall |
| 2017 | Pirelli World Challenge Sprint X GT | Second in team and driver championships |
| 2020 | IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship | Wright's first IMSA victory, at Sebring |
| 2021 | Michelin Pilot Challenge; GT World Challenge America | Driver champion in both series |
How is his career remembered?
Heylen is remembered as a versatile driver who won titles in several series and then built his strongest results in North American endurance and GT racing. His 2021 double title and the Porsche Cup are the clearest markers of that later success.
His open-wheel results were modest in scale, with a fifth at Cleveland as the high point, but they gave him the experience he later used in endurance racing. The Formula Ford Festival win in 2002 remains the clearest early milestone.
His time as a race director and driving instructor also gave him a view of the sport beyond the cockpit, which adds another layer to a career that has moved between the car and the organising side of racing.
