Abel edges Rasmussen to top of Indy Nxt FP1 at Mid-Ohio

Photo: Penske Entertainment / James Black

Abel Motorsports’ sole driver Jacob Abel went fastest in the first Indy Nxt practice session at Mid-Ohio.

Abel was without his usual team-mate Colin Kaminsky, while HMD Motorsports was down to eight cars as Josh Green was absent.

It was a relatively incident practice sesion and most of the field were able to complete at least 20 laps during the 45 minutes of running. A red flag brought out by Ernie Francis Jr did pause the action for roughly five minutes, however.  

The HMD driver, who is recovering from an injury, was pushing and spun off into the gravel. The car became beached, and needed to be removed. Francis then spent the rest of FP1 in the pits, preserving his car for FP2 tomorrow.  

Before that point, Christian Rasmussen had been top of the order with a 1m12.3158s benchmark laptime. Kyffin Simpson in second was less than a tenth of a second off his pace. 

Rasmussen’s time would stand as the fastest for the majority of the session, as it wasn’t until after the red flags that most of the drivers set their personal bests.

Hunter McElrea was the first driver to better Rasmussen, than an improvement from Louis Foster put him ahead of both.

Rasmussen briefly reclaimed first place, but it was Abel at the top of the order when the chequered flag fell.

His 1m11.3899s laptime put him 0.0392s ahead of Rasmussen, as points leader Nolan Siegel jumped up to third late on ahead of Foster, Simpson and McElrea. 

Rasmus Lindh and Reece Gold in seventh and eighth also managed to lap in the 1m11s, while the entire top 12 were covered by less than a second.

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