Photo: Joe Skibinski
Jacob Abel dubbed Gateway “my first oval race” of 2024 after going from sixth to second but being unable to match race-winning title rival Louis Foster.
It was the season’s second oval race, following on from Iowa Speedway where Foster won and Abel started seventh then was in eighth during the race’s final third when he retired with a puncture. There was only 4m58s of green flag action preceding that.
After another dissapointing qualifying, Abel could not deny he had a good race at Gateway despite Foster’s pace advantage.
“I did what I wanted to on the start, sent it, basically, around the outside and then ended up having to do it again,” the Abel Motorsports driver said.
“Our car was really good. I think it was a little bit on the side of oversteer, but that’s kind of because we were expecting to be in traffic all day and it turned out we spent pretty much none of the day in traffic. So what can you do there? But regardless, it’s a great day for us.”
Abel’s team-mates Yuven Sundaramoorthy and Jordan Missig took personal best results in third and ninth. He said the team made progress after qualifying: “We delivered some good race cars, for sure. I just got to start a little bit higher next time.”
After having “a lot of confidence at the start”, Abel climbed to fourth on lap seven, then a collision ahead put him second.
A caution period followed and HMD Motorsports’ Christian Brooks passed Abel after the restart. Once back in second, Abel was 1.7 seconds behind Andretti Global’s Foster. The gap was 3.5s when another caution period began on lap 53. After the next restart 16 laps remained, and Foster won by 3.3s.
“I didn’t really get to do Iowa. I had a puncture,” dwelled Abel. “I didn’t really get to run and wasn’t able to feel out the grip, learn how these guys race on ovals and all that. So today was really kind of my first oval race of the season. And I was just kind of pulling from what I knew last year. There’s a little bit of tyre management [included in that].”
Having not expected to run in clean air, his set-up direction “made it a little bit hard on tyres, especially the rear”. Abel admitted for the final restart his “tyres were a little bit dirty”, then “falling off and we were struggling with a little bit of instability”.
There are three races left, and Foster leads by 91 points. Six races ago, Abel led by 25. His Gateway result was his best since race four of the season, and he says a “number of things” is making the difference between himself and Foster.
“[Racing] is a game of millimetres. So it’s hard to nail it. It’s really hard,” he stated. “We made a couple mistakes, had a little bit of bad luck, and it just kind of snowballs, especially in that centre part of the season when it’s just back-to-back-to-back-to-back.”