Photo: Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Road to Indy Spring Training started at Barber Motorsports Park on Sunday with test sessions for Indy Pro 2000 and USF2000 drivers.
Each series had two one-hour sessions, and will return to the track on Monday for extended runing.
Jay Howard Driver Development’s Wyatt Brichacek topped both sessions in IP2000, with laptimes improving significantly in the second session.
The USF2000 graduate set a 1m17.7737s in the earlier session, going 0.0916 seconds faster than Juncos Racing’s Reece Gold at the top of the times. Gold ended up not improving in the later session while his rivals did, and dropped to eighth on the day’s combined timesheet as a result.
The field was closely spread, with the top 13 spread by less than a second. Turn 3 Motorsport’s Formula Regional Americas convert James Roe ended up closest to Brichacek, 0.2534s off his 1m17.3432s benchmark, with JHDD’s Christian Rasmussen and Pabst Racing’s Hunter McElrea also within three tenths of the pace.
There was a red flag almost immediately in session one, and there was a stoppage in the USF2000 running too.
Exclusive Autosport’s Christian Brooks topped both of the USF2000 sessions, setting a 1m22.2309s in the first and a 1m22.3236s in the second.
Series veteran Yuven Sundaramoorthy set a late lap in his Pasbt Racing-run car to go second fastest in session one, while Turn 3 Motorsport’s Josh Green and DEForce Racing’s Nolan Siegel got close to Brooks in the later session and ended up third and fourth overall.
The USF2000 field had an additional car entered by Exclusive Autorsport for Formula Ford 1600 graduate Grant Palmer. The American came 13th in Castle Combe FF1600 last year.
Testing round-up
Indy Pro 2000
1 Wyatt Brichacek JHDD 1m17.3432s
2 James Roe Jr Turn 3 Motorsport +0.2534s
3 Christian Rasmussen JHDD +0.2855s
4 Hunter McElrea Pabst Racing +0.2885s
5 Cameron Shields DEForce Racing +0.3171s
6 Enaam Ahmed RP Motorsport +0.3961s
7 Hunter Yeany Velocity Racing Development +0.5036s
8 Reece Gold Juncos Racing +0.5221s
9 Colin Kaminsky Pabst Racing +0.5646s
10 Kyffin Simpson Juncos Racing +0.6498s
USF2000
1 Christian Brooks Exclusive Autosport 1m22.2309s
2 Yuven Sundaramoorthy Pabst Racing +0.1448s
3 Josh Green Turn 3 Motorsport +0.1645s
4 Nolan Siegel DEForce Racing +0.2056s
5 Josh Pierson Pabst Racing +0.2668s
6 Jace Denmark-Gessel Pabst Racing +0.3503s
7 Prescott Campbell DEForce Racing +0.4109s
8 Dylan Christie Turn 3 Motorsport +0.4146s
9 Grant Palmer Exclusive Autosport +0.5265s
10 Kiko Porto DEForce Racing +0.5349s