Photo: Joe Skibinski
Jacob Abel fell from second to sixth on lap one of the Milwaukee 100, but managed to return to his starting position two minutes from the end of the race.
Although the result meant the Indy Nxt title went to race winner Louis Foster, Abel’s recovery drive still left him pleased after Abel Motorsports provided “a really awesome race car”.
“I think we were one of the cars to beat,” he reflected. “The start though today was a little questionable. It’s supposed to be a gradual acceleration and it was kind of a gradual deceleration and then [Foster] went, so that kinda caught me out. We had a little contact there, but we were able to drive all the way up through it again. Just unfortunately didn’t have enough for the win. It’s super hard to pass here. I think we made the most moves though. So, super proud of that.”
Andretti Global’s Foster bottlenecked the field on the rolling start from pole, and Abel “kind of had to keep checking up, so I didn’t get ahead of him before we went green”. When Foster decided to take the field to racing speeds, Abel went for the outside line to get around him. Behind, HMD Motorsports’ Christian Brooks also ventured high to find space.
Abel’s rear-right caught Brooks’ front-left, sending the latter sliding into Andretti Cape’s Salvador de Alba and putting him in the wall.
Yet it was de Alba who Abel had to overcome to finish second, and he got his head down after being “really frustrated” at losing spots.
“It was just balancing the saving tyres versus trying to get more track position. And I think we did a good job with that.”
After taking fifth on lap four, Abel only secured fourth on lap 34 of 90 after a caution period. He was third four laps later, and 0.3s behind de Alba. That gap grew to 2.7s, and was 1.3s with seven laps remaining. Four laps later, Abel was ahead.
It had been predicted overtaking was going to be tricky on the short Milwaukee Mile oval, but Abel thought differently.
“I’ve been optimistic about this race,” he said. “Maybe it was just me. Which is fine, If I’m the only car that can pass, that’s okay. I was working the bottom really well, I knew what I needed with the car, with the team. We worked a little bit on that, kind of sacrificing our qualifying set-up a little bit to have a bit more rear security, to be able to run that bottom in the middle of the race, and save our rear tyres as much as we can.
“Firestone brought a great product here that we could race with, but we also had to manage throughout the race, which was super rewarding. I think that’s one of my strong suits as a driver, saving tyres.
He added: “It was just being as confident as we can and trying to go places that other cars weren’t.”