INDIANAPOLIS – When you drive for Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports, it’s easy to get lost amid the well-known names that have used the team as a launching pad for their careers, including Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, Rico Abreu and Tanner Thorson.

While Holly Shelton is hoping to be the next driver to add their name to that list, she also wants to make sure her name is remembered for her own accomplishments along the way.

Shelton, from Gold River, Calif., was brought into Toyota’s driver development program on Larson’s recommendation after she showed speed and prowess while racing both Larson and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. at Cycleland Speedway, the track where she made her name racing outlaw karts.

From there, she quickly found a home amid the best midget team in the sport and has wasted little time proving that she can race with the best, while continuing to grow as a driver along the way.

“Racing for Keith and Pete (Willoughby) is as prestigious as you can get in midget racing,” noted Shelton. “It seems like the last few years I’ve learned a lot from them, both for myself racing-wise and outside of racing. I think I’ve grown as a driver and a person. They have certainly taught me a ton.”

“There’s about six or eight of us that have come up out of Cycleland, and it was the end of 2015 where I had a pretty good year in outlaw karts and was approached asking if I’d be interested in driving for Toyota and driving a Keith Kunz midget,” Shelton recalled. “It was pretty surreal. Pete Willoughby called me one day … and I ended up coming out one day for the Indy Invitational outlaw kart race and visited the shop afterwards. That was in December of 2015, and after my dad and I talked with Keith and Pete, it was decided and I guess the rest is history. That was the first time I had ever really met them and sat down with them, but it felt like the right fit and it’s crazy to think how far we’ve come since then.

“The relationship that Toyota has with Keith and all of their drivers … they support you both in racing and outside of racing; they provide the best equipment and the best mentors and they train you and groom you to be the best racer and person you can be,” she added. “It’s second to none and I can’t think of any other company or team that does it the way they do. It’s a privilege for me to be a part of that.”

Shelton circles her time at Cycleland and in outlaw karts as a big factor in her prowess in a midget.

“Those of us who have come out of Cycleland the last few years … it definitely helps that Kyle (Larson) and Rico (Abreu) really started that path,” Shelton said. “Outlaw karts are very difficult to drive. You have to be really aggressive and they teach you a lot of things about how to get up on the wheel in that style of racing.

“Cycleland is a track where there’s a top, a bottom … it’s slick, you can throw sliders … so on top of the cars being hard to drive, you have a track where you can learn just about everything there is to know about dirt racing all at once,” she added. “From there, you can take those skills and adapt them to almost any track. It’s a perfect scenario, especially when outlaw kart racing is so big in California.”