Jordan Missig made his INDY NXT by Firestone debut in 2024, competing in five races and scoring his first series top-10 finish at World Wide Technology Raceway with a ninth-place result.

Missig began the 2025 season on the streets of St. Petersburg with a career-best qualifying effort of ninth and finishing sixth in his No. 48 entry for ABEL Motorsports.

“I think it just proves to the mental toughness and the strengths that ABEL Motorsports has this year,” Missig said. “It was a big, big step up with behind the wheel last year, but I think we've taken a lot of that and pushed into this year.

“I give credit to ABEL Motorsports and also give credit to myself now that got kind of a season of INDY NXT racing under my belt and the offseason testing. I think it's now got me trained to how this car is supposed to be driven, how it's supposed to react. I'm not having to jump from car to car anymore. I just see time in this car has really been a true testament of what my ability is.”

Missig raced in multiple racing series last year, rotating between his INDY NXT machine and the Radical Cup North America car. The jockeying paid off on one side by winning the Radical Cup championship with nine wins for Graham Rahal Performance.

Yes, that Graham Rahal.

“I guess you could say the correlation with me and Graham kind of goes back to when his dad, Bobby, owned a building out at the Autobahn Country Club (Missing lives in the neighborhood in Joliet, Illinois) and was one of the founding members for when that track was first built,” he said. “Once we started to go down the INDYCAR ladder system and he wanted to bring out this Radical team, the first thing for me was to jump onboard with that program and try to get it built up from the ground running. And once we did that, Graham (Rahal) was able to take me under his wing to kind of show me the light and the direction of why they're the best teams, what's the best way to kind of navigate through tracks and become a mentor of me.

“The whole goal was to bring young kids into the sport for a little bit cheaper cost, to then get them to want to jump up to another series, to eventually want to go either visit sports car racing or want to make the INDYCAR SERIES. That's that stepping-stone that he's able to provide to help drivers, help sponsors, help anybody who wants to kind of go to that ranking to then want to get to the INDYCAR SERIES.”

Missig also crosses paths with Myles Rowe, his teammate during the 2023 USF Pro 2000 Championship with Pabst Racing. That year, Rowe won the title, and Missig earned a best friend.

Rowe moved from HMD Motorsports last season to join ABEL Motorsports teaming with Missig on the INDY NXT level. Rowe finished fourth Sunday in St. Petersburg.

“Myles and I go back, obviously, with Pabst Racing,” Missig said. “Him and I get along very well together. I'd say he's probably one of the closest guys in the paddock that I can go to. He's from New York, I'm from Chicago, two major big cities here in the USA.

“We just kind of jell together very well. Our driving styles are similar to each other's. Whenever we see each other on track, we just try to give each other as much space and room as we can, obviously.

“And now that we're teammates, we kind of have a sense of how much room we need to give each other. I think the correlation that me and Myles have, and we kind of talk the way we kind of chatter between each other, and the lingo we have is pretty similar to each other. We kind of bounce ideas off each other. We kind of base things pretty similar. So, I'd say the relationship that we have is pretty tight, but obviously, once you get on the track, it's a totally different mindset than once you go wheel to wheel with each other.”

Missig aims to battle Rowe for a championship this season, and consistency is going to be the key to getting there. Missig learned that steady performance is crucial for a driver to earn a championship. That was a benefit to racing multiple disciplines because Missig learned where to position himself on the racetrack and how to settle for safe finishes versus when to go to the limit to gain championship points.

“Bring home the best possible finish you can, instead of just going for broke, going for wins in that sense,” he said. “So, I think that's kind of what helped a lot, was just understanding, get the best finish you can, because at the end of the day, the more points you can bring home, the better it's going to better your odds for each championship.”