Portland Indy Lights: Pedersen scores first victory

First-time polesitter Benjamin Pedersen hit the gas not long after exiting Turn 12 and then moved his Global Racing Group with HMD car across on fellow front row starter and teammate Danial Frost of HMD with Dale Coyne Racing on his left, before moving right to deter a challenge from second-row starter Christian Rasmussen of Andretti Autosport. Matt Brabham, who had beaten championship leader Linus Lundqvist at the drop of the green also looked at getting around teammate Rasmussen, but was deterred.

Having had a relatively clean Turn 1, series debutant Flinn Lazier (son of 1996 Indy 500 winner Buddy Lazier) collided with Christian Bogle further around the lap and out came the full course caution.

The restart at the end of Lap 5 saw Pedersen make a big jump and again they were clear through Turn 1, but again a yellow had to come out. Rasmussen and Frost ran side by side along the back straight, pressured hard by Brabham, but Brabham saw the inevitable coming and backed off…

Into Turn 10, side-by-side, Frost and Rasmussen made contact. The HMD car speared off the road on the outside of Turn 11 and hard into the tire barrier, while Rasmussen went off on the dirt on the inside, realized he wasn’t going to make it to Turn 12 and instead took the access road and rejoined ninth and last in the pack. Frost emerged relatively unscathed, despite his hard and sudden stop.

Rebuilding the tire wall took a while, and it wasn’t until the end of Lap 15 that Pedersen got the green once more, getting the jump on Brabham who was also able to hold off new third-place driver Lundqvist. Behind him, Jacob Abel of Abel Motorsports and Hunter McElrea of Andretti Autosport ran fourth and fifth, ahead of Trans-Am ace Ernie Francis Jr. in the Force Indy machine.

For the next 10 laps, Pedersen eased away from Brabham at about the same rate that Brabham pulled away from Lundqvist so that by Lap 20 the top three were covered by three seconds. Brabham set a couple of fast laps to close his deficit to 1.1sec but Pedersen was well able to respond and got the lead out to 1.7sec in just two laps. His advantage nudged over two seconds with five laps to go, but next time by Brabham reset the race’s fastest lap and was again faster on Lap 32. However, Pedersen then stabilized the lead at 1.35sec on Lap 33, although Brabham had shaved his deficit to just under one second at the checkered flag.

After five runner-up finishes at this level, this was Pedersen’s first Indy Lights victory, while Brabham kept the championship battle (barely) alive, since his deficit to third-placed Lundqvist is down to 103, and the Swede needed to be 109 points clear to seal the championship in Portland. There are two races left to go, at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca next week.

Further back, Francis was able to keep Robb and the frustrated Rasmussen behind him until Lap 31, when Robb passed, and 32 when Rasmussen moved into seventh. This was, nonetheless, Francis’ most convincing performance yet in open-wheel racing.

P	Name	Laps	FL	FTime	Diff	Led	ST	Team	Points
1	Benjamin Pedersen	35	33	1:04.0291	-	35	1	Global Racing Group with HMD	385
2	Matthew Brabham	35	31	1:03.8712	0.9651		6	Andretti Autosport	412
3	Linus Lundqvist	35	30	1:04.1133	6.4087		4	HMD Motorsports with Dale Coyne Racing	515
4	Jacob Abel	35	25	1:04.5384	11.0037		8	Abel Motorsports	293
5	Hunter McElrea	35	27	1:04.3185	11.3346		7	Andretti Autosport	401
6	Sting Ray Robb	35	35	1:04.3429	17.3661		5	Andretti Autosport	389
7	Christian Rasmussen	35	33	1:04.4371	19.4541		3	Andretti Autosport	346
8	Ernie Francis Jr.	35	22	1:04.7315	21.1388		9	Force Indy	263
9	Kyffin Simpson	35	34	1:04.7110	21.6544		10	HMD Motorsports	276
10	Danial Frost	5	1	1:08.4362	Contact		2	HMD Motorsports with Dale Coyne Racing	330
11	Christian Bogle	1	1	7:19.0299	Contact		11	HMD Motorsports with Dale Coyne Racing	256
12	Flinn Lazier	---	--	No Time	Contact		12	Abel Motorsports	18