Lean Campana

Lean Campana is a world-class Filipino-American racing driver, racing under the US flag. Born in the Philippines but moved to the United States, and later to Altruras, he became the first American to win the Morson-Austin Trophy in a decade when he won the ESPLAR Elite Series title in 2016, and the first Filipino driver since Jose Antonio Arroyo to win the EES title. He announced a shock exit at the beginning of 2017 to pursue a career in Formula A (now Formula Sigma) with Williams, where at Bahrain he suffered a severe injury which left him off the track for 6 months. When he returned he won at the Circuit of the Americas despite a desperate last-lap charge by Red Bull driver Miklos Gál, which landed him a ride at Mercedes in 2018. Despite a controversial season in general due to bad officiating, he won 11 races that year to take a dominating championship. He originally wanted to return to the ESPLAR Elite Series to improve his driving skills in 2019, only to find out that Formula A was no more and Formula NX rose to the ashes to "replace" it. Despite not winning the Formula NX title, he won 4 races that year. In 2020 he returns with Ferrari to the series where he won the title in 2016.

As one of ESPLAR's most well known drivers alongside a small group of drivers that includes Laura Kerrivan, Julia Truong, and Hayato Kitanami, he has consistently been a major influence in the series for his absolute consistency in the league.

Early Career
Campana started a racing career in 2006 in karting in his native SF Bay Area, in which he often rode BART to Dublin to practice his racing. He was a fan of Team Nitra, having watched Matthias Volker become the 1st non-American driver to win the Morson-Austin Trophy and hoping his title would ignite international support for the ESPLAR Elite Series.

As soon as he graduated from Tyrgard Lake University in 2014 he began to focus on the ESPLAR Lites Series with a team named Turvali-Koralia Racing. Back in 2014 TKR were Mercedes powered, but they came from a disappointing slump with their previous driver having suffered numerous problems on and off the track. So Turvali-Koralia replaced it with Campana. Immediately Campana showed his on-track skills honed in by more than 6 years of stock-car training, and proceeded to win the next 8 races. So dominant was this stretch of the season was such that despite not winning the championship, TKR were promoted into the ESPLAR Elite Series for 2015 (they still kept a portion of TKR in ESPLAR Lites)

A Painful Near-Miss (2015)
As the 2015 ESPLAR Elite Series season began TKR had a terrible start as expected, failing to finish their first four races. However most of those were due to crashes or mechanical failures not of their own doing. Campana was taken out in the big one at Daytona which collected 26 cars, and suffered an engine failure at Carbondale. He was then taken out of the Round of New Hampshire due to mechanical failure and the #32 wrecked out of Watkins Glen.

Things began to change at the Round of England, where a race of high attrition among the top contenders led the TKR #32 car to their first ever points finish in 17th. There was a rough outing in France which led Campana to be left out of the points, but once the EES went back to the states TKR's reliability began improving and critical Mercedes backing began to arrive which began to show in the critical Round of North Carolina.

At Rockingham Campana managed an incredible 9th thanks to careful use of racing line and being as close to the back straight wall as possible without hitting it. Darlington was a massive crashfest which allowed Campana to finish in the top 5 for the first time by surviving and bringing the TKR #32 home.

A dramatic wreckfest at Quincy brought a 2nd top 5 in a row, followed by another top 5 at Texas World Speedway with the big one on lap 88.

From Altruras until California, Campana managed a record 7 podiums in a row thanks to a number of improvements and good luck affecting the #32 car, to the point where Campana became a contender for the ESPLAR Elite Series championship.

North Dakota was a turning point in this incredible drive, thanks to another big crash on lap 70 which eliminated a number of championship contenders including Jan Henkla and Kazuichi Saihara. Saihara would recover at Talladega, but not before Campana managed to race (and outplace) him in the standings and earning another 3rd place. Campana's podium streak came to an end at Germany where he was taken out in the big one, alas eliminating him from championship contention as Mylo-Kerrivan, Team Nitra, Team Maxima, and Azeri Motorsports pulled away from him; eventually Hennivan's Riccardo Olsen won the title, however Campana placed as the highest of the rookies in 6th.

Over the offseason many teams wanted to take Campana into the team, notably Hennivan Racing as Olsen retired after the 2015 season. Team Nitra wanted to add Campana into the team to partner Jan Henkla as Mittyia Hala was on the verge of being fired after a disappointing season. However, Campana insisted that the Slovak driver remain with Team Nitra because of Henkla and Hala's friendship with each other, and so he declined. Meanwhile, Mylo-Kerrivan had fired another driver and were seeking a new name to partner Laura Kerrivan. Campana quickly declined because Chevrolet was not his thing. Team Maxima, the Motul Racing Team and MSquared Racing also added their names to potentially hiring the #32, all of which were rejected. MSquared even offered a ludicrous contract to Campana, but even that was not enough to see him at the team. By now, it was clear that Campana was going to remain at Turvali-Koralia and he was not going anywhere.

The First Chance of Glory (2016)
In anticipation for the 2016 ESPLAR Elite Series season, Turvali-Koralia made stellar progress of improvements to their car. With Mercedes power units heading their way after their breakout season plus a mountain of new fan support, Turvali Koralia were quickly becoming one of the teams to beat heading into the 2016 season. Instead of trying to perfect their car, noting how "incredibly powerful" it was, TKR hired another driver, in British driver Mark Ashbury (the first since 2010) who was an ETCC regular who would only drive for one season. For unknown reasons, TKR gave Ashbury a vastly "inferior" car compared to Campana's #32. The true reason for this was finally revealed 4 years later when Campana declassified files related to TKR's actions with Ashbury.

TKR started the season with 2 tough top 10 results, not as promising as expected although it is to be made clear that many other teams had made improvements over the offseason. Team Farley, Saihara Motorsports, and the main Altruras teams were the ones to watch in the early part of the season.

Although he scored only 5 wins that season (3rd highest to Kazuichi Saihara and Jan Henkla), the points battle between Campana, Saihara, Henkla, and with Laura Kerrivan, Tony Farley, and Lukas Johansen went into that year's Evanshire 700, with Kaz being 14 points ahead of Henkla and Campana a further 12 back. As this was a double points event Tony Farley, Laura Kerrivan, and Lukas Johansen were also a factor in the championship.

Campana started the 2016 Evanshire 700 in 24th, and began gradually making his way through the field. Unlike last season where he wasn't a big fan of the 700 mile start-to-finish format, this time he was more used to it and he wasn't complaining about the car as often. He needed to finish 5 positions ahead of Kaz to have any chance of winning the title, as Kaz, being the 2010 Formula Beta Champion for Addax, was not new to endurance racing.

Fortunately luck would come to his rescue, as on lap 249 the big one erupted. Fatigue had been, as usual, taking a toll on several drivers.

Domination (2018)
The win at CotA secured his drive with Mercedes for the 2018 Formula A season, however early season predictions for the championship placed both Florian Volker and Mercedes teammate Addison Bailey as the championship favorites. That was not going to stop the #32 car from setting fastest lap after fastest lap during preseason testing.

New Beginnings (2019-20)
The end of Formula A signaled the beginning of a new era in motorsport, with Formula NX expected to be the "fastest motorsport in the world". In anticipation for this, Campana remained with Mercedes for 2019. (WIP)

At the end of 2019 Lean Campana parted ways with Mercedes and returned to Turvali-Koralia in the ESPLAR Elite Series, which became the Ferrari ESPLAR Elite Series team for the 2020 season.

Trivia

 * In all series (including Formula NX), Campana often uses a cautious, tactful driving style, only making passes when he needs to. Sometimes, he can make such passes carefully on the 1st lap!
 * He is also a strategic racer; in the Formula NX Belgian Grand Prix he successfully held off a charging Luca Farina on intermediate tyres in drying conditions in the closing stages of the race!
 * Off the track, Campana almost never drives alone, preferring to use public transport. He probably learned of the fact that former Formula Sigma champion Jyri Maatta almost wrecked his car in perfect conditions, sometimes by freak accident.
 * He is a loyal but ambitious team driver, sometimes switching teams when he sees an opportunity; most infamously he switched loyalties from Mercedes to Ferrari due to Mercedes faltering in comparison.
 * He has a long standing friendship with Ferrari's Naoto Kazami, probably because Campana famously predicted he would not win the 2019 Formula NX championship and later stating he was going to be wrong anyway. After seeing how dominant he was, Campana dreamed of driving for Ferrari alongside him. He probably decided to switch to Ferrari in ESPLAR Elite Series so he can partner with Naoto.
 * Another critical component of the friendship between the two is their incredible connection with Sunrise anime series Future GPX Cyber Formula. Campana first watched Cyber Formula during his recovery from injury in 2017 which is when he first met Naoto Kazami, then 15 years old. Campana famously joked that Naoto looked nothing like Hayato Kazami because the two were not related (they have the same last names by coincidence). Resemblances between Campana and Naoto do not stop here; they have Hayato Kazami as their favorite drivers and wished that Seiichiro Shiba (who drove for SUGO GP as a test driver in 2020-22 but switched to AOI Formula in 2023) remained at SUGO and got promoted when Henri Claytor moved to Missing Link. (they'd wished that Edelhi Bootsvorz retired instead of going to SUGO)
 * Campana has a strange rivalry with Greater Kanto Motorsports' Julia Truong. No one knows why the rivalry came to be but the two raced to see who would grab a Ferrari seat first in Formula Sigma. Reportedly the rivalry died down in late 2018 when Julia Truong opted to stay in the ESPLAR Elite Series and not go into Formula Sigma.
 * Lean's Arktene ESPLAR ID is LC19943009CA. (CA being California)
 * In both ESPLAR and IRL, Lean uses #32, while #27 and #78 are backup numbers.
 * #32 is seldom used in GP4 Offline Championship. In fact, Campana is the first ever GP4 OC user of #32. His closest numbers belong to both his favorite drivers, Florian Volker (#31) and Will Neller (#33).

Some Off-Universe stuff:
 * Campana was the highest rookie in the 2014 GP4 DTM Offline Championship. A couple of reasons why:
 * Campana often references a lot of Future GPX Cyber Formula when comparing his situations.
 * He famously predicted he was not going to finish well in the races. In only 1 race was he proven correct (the GP2 race in Estoril).
 * He jinxes his own race results.
 * In GP4 OC his favorite drivers are Florian Volker and Will Neller. Volker is due to his 4 championships and tendency of memes in the OC (especially green cars), while Neller is due to the fact he has the longest legacy of failure of not winning a driver's title in the entire OC history (10 seasons but no titles)
 * Campana also made an appearance in the ARCSOA Elite Series, driving for a underpowered team. He did very well in the 14th American 700 when he expected himself to not make it to the next stage.
 * He has considered entering the TMUniverse Canon with fictional sponsors Arktene and Anaheim Industries, possibly starting from the FARC Lowe Dollar Series and making his way to the TM Lights. Since then these plans have been shelved due to commitments with the ESPLAR Leagues.
 * Campana is currently considering entering a number of NR2003 leagues, including the Pokemon Cup + (hosted by Pichu London), NR2003 Pennzoil Truck Series (hosted by joerut00000), and likely the ASCA Copperhead Amateur Series and Fuel Bros. Racing League (FBRL) Hardee's National Series or Napa Pro Series. His likely purpose is unknown, although likely it is to represent Team GP4 Offline Championship and bring home glory for the GP4OC, hoping to convince people in GP4 OC to enter these leagues to bring glory to the GP4OC and convince people to enter the OC. (It is worked within ESPLAR as Julius Andersson of GP4 OC won the 2019 Evanshire 700)
 * Campana participates in Samet Ozkan's NR2003 Series, the Vodafone Cup Series, the Playstation Series, Ritz Truck Series, and Circle K Indycar Series. A number of ESPLAR OCs have made their way into this universe and found success, most notably Miyoko Uemura who enjoys 2 wins in Playstation Series.