Visa for a Race Mechanic.

I currently have a job offer for a mechanic position on a Champ Car Atlantic Race Team. If I can get a visa worked out I should be set. The thing is I do not have a degree, only related experience. I've worked at various automotive jobs, completed a 8 month mechanics program at a racing school, and was a lead mechanic last season on a Star Mazda race car (Professional race team in a series one step down from Champ Car Atlantic). My question is, what visa would I qualify for and roughly how long would the process take to complete?

Bit tricky this one because of the lack of formal qualifications.

"Lead mechanic" on a race team sounds quite impressive though so you might be able to get an O-1 entry, which is for "outstanding" applicants. This section of the USCIS website has more details.

Basically the employer has to demonstrate to USCIS that you are outstanding by providing proof, and they apply using I-129. When that is approved you get an I-797 which is what you present at the POE with your passport to enter as O-1.

This gives you more info as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-1_visa

What you're looking for is magazine articles and testimonials, etc. about how wonderful your team was and a list of all the things they won and that it was all because of you being the lead mechanic.

Don't be too intimidated, I know of a water skiier who got in.

One other thought. One of my friends was in the same sort of situation as he was a mechanic that wanted to work on a Busch Series team in the US. He went to a lawyer and managed to get a TN Visa. He said he was a engineer for the team working under the teams lead engineer. In my case I could easily say the same thing really cause the mechanics can have say in how the car is set up and are the ones actually setting up the car. By this I mean setting things like ride height, corner weights, wing angle, caster, camber, toe, spring rate, shock pressures...this list goes on. You can see why an engineer or multiple engineers are needed to run a race car. Anyways, neither me or my friend have a degree in any sort of engineering but have had significant experience in racing.

Doing some searching around on the internet I found this TN job list:

http://www.grasmick.com/tnlist.htm

If this list is valid I could see my job fitting under the "Technician" category specifically engineering. I do work in direct support of a professional (the lead engineer) and I have specific knowledge that is directly applied to real applications and problems (basically making a race car setup for a specific driver, track, or condition to make it as fast as possible for a given event).

Any idea if this would be valid for a TN?

Engineer is a valid TN category, but they usually want to see qualifications. If your experience shows enough that it's equivalent to having solid qualifications then you could get TN, but that is the sort of thing you might want to run past an immigration consultant who has dealt with them.