Photo: Manuel Sulaiman
Pre-season testing for Indy Pro 2000 and USF2000 concluded at Barber Motorsports Park on Monday, with Juncos Racing’s Manuel Sulaiman setting the IP2000 pace.
Mexican returnee Sulaiman was fastest in the day’s early morning session and the afternoon one, but laptimes didn’t improve over the day and his first benchmark went unbeaten.
There were two red flags in the lunchtime session, and Sulaiman set no laps, but laptimes were nowhere near what he’d achieved earlier. Sunday pacesetter Wyatt Brichacek was on top, with RP Motorsport’s Enaam Ahmed in second.
As in the morning, it was very close at the top in the afternoon with the top four covered by less than a tenth of a second. Sulaiman set the pace by 0.0627s from Exclusive Autosport’s Braden Eves, with RP/Andretti Autosport’s Enzo Fittipaldi and Turn 3 Motorsport’s Kyffin Simpson also closely matched. Only 13 of the 17 cars entered set a lap, with Brichacek and Jay Howard Driver Development team-mate Christian Rasmussen staying in the pits.
Similarly in USF2000, Monday’s fastest laps were set at the very start of the day, with Exclusive’s Christian Brooks and DEForce Racing’s Prescott Campbell both able to lap in the 1m20s.
Campbell’s team-mate Nolan Siegel was then the next closest, and ended up topping the final session of the day, while Turn 3’s Josh Green was an anamoly when he set the session two pace as he actually improved on his session one performance to go fourth fastest overall.
The top 16 drivers were covered by less than a second, and that included Exclusive’s test-only entry Grant Palmer, who was third behind DEForce’s Siegel and Kiko Porto in the final session.
Testing round-up
Indy Pro 2000
1 Manuel Sulaiman Juncos Racing 1m16.8167s
2 Christian Rasmussen JHDD +0.0143s
3 Kyffin Simpson Juncos Racing +0.0803s
4 Hunter McElrea Pabst Racing +0.1893s
5 James Roe Jr Turn 3 Motorsport +0.2384s
6 Artem Petrov Exclusive Autosport +0.2457s
7 Reece Gold Juncos Racing +0.3452s
8 Cameron Shields DEForce Racing +0.3540s
9 Enzo Fittipaldi RP Motorsport/Andretti Autosport +0.3817s
10 Colin Kaminsky Pabst Racing +0.4381s
USF2000
1 Christian Brooks Exclusive Autosport 1m20.7981s
2 Prescott Campbell DEForce Racing +0.1405s
3 Nolan Siegel DEForce Racing +0.2948s
4 Josh Green Turn 3 Motorsport +0.466s
5 Kiko Porto DEForce Racing +0.5160s
6 Josh Pierson Pabst Racing +0.5267s
7 Jace Denmark-Gessel Pabst Racing +0.5910s
8 Yuven Sundaramoorthy Pabst Racing +0.6319s
9 Billy Frazer Exclusive Autosport +0.6566s
10 Myles Rowe Force Indy +0.6792s