Home News Ahmed tops IP2000 test, Exclusive Autosport goes without three drivers

Ahmed tops IP2000 test, Exclusive Autosport goes without three drivers

by Ida Wood

Photo: Gavin Baker Photography/Road to Indy

Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Enaam Ahmed was fastest in Indy Pro 2000’s pre-event test at Barber Motorsports Park.

It was Pabst Racing’s Colin Kaminsky who set the pace early in the first session of the Thursday test, posting a 1m17.805s on a mostly empty track and then improving by a tenth of a second before the rest of the field came out.

He could only make small gains after, while Ahmed rose to the top with a 1m17.161s lap and his team-mate Reece Gold moved into second place by setting a 1m17.358s.

There was a mid-session red flag, and once the track returned to green another quick lap came in from Ahmed to put himself 0.228s ahead of Gold as there was a stagnation of improvements in the final 10 minutes.

Turn 3 Motorsport’s Josh Green was third fastest, 0.332s back, and Jay Howard Driver Development’s Braden Eves was 0.403s off the pace in fourth.

The top two were flipped in session two, with Gold leading the away with a 1m17.190s lap and Ahmed lapping 0.293s slower in the second place. Kaminsky went third fastest as one of the few improvers in the final 10 minutes, but was 0.619s off the pace. Green was fourth, and Louis Foster was three quarters of a second back in fifth.

Foster is the only driver in Exclusive Autosport’s line-up for this weekend’s races at Barber, with Christian Brooks and Matt-Round Garrido absent due to confirmed budget issues while Lindsay Brewer’s debut with the team has been pushed back to the next round, and he and the returning combination of FatBoy Racing and Charles Finelli were the only drivers to improve on their session one pace. Finelli previously raced in IP2000 from 2017 to 2020.

Gold was on top again early in the final session, heading NASCAR convert Salvador de Alba early before Green and Foster moved into the top two positions. The second red flag period of the day interrupted proceedings, and after that the pace didn’t improve for all bar Eves who jumped into second place in the final minute. He ended up just 0.019s off Green’s pace, with Foster 0.053s from first place, but nobody had been able to match Ahmed’s benchmark from the first session.

There were three drivers who did set their personal bests in session three through: Foster, de Alba and Turn 3 Motorsport’s Jonathan Browne.

Test results

Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps
1 Enaam Ahmed Juncos Hollinger Racing 1m17.130s 36
2 Reece Gold Juncos Hollinger Racing 1m17.358s +0.2281s 39
3 Josh Green Turn 3 Motorsport 1m17.462s +0.3319s 45
4 Braden Eves JHDD 1m17.533s +0.4037s 36
5 Kiko Porto DEForce Racing 1m17.573s +0.4433s 51
6 Colin Kaminsky Pabst Racing 1m17.575s +0.4453s 60
7 Wyatt Brichacek JHDD 1m17.631s +0.5016s 19
8 Jack William Miller Miller Vinatieri Motorsports 1m17.677s +0.5471s 35
9 Louis Foster Exclusive Autosport 1m17.871s +0.7408s 51
10 Nolan Siegel DEForce Racing 1m17.912s +0.7818s 52
11 Jordan Missig Pabst Racing 1m17.944s +0.8146s 66
12 Jonathan Browne Turn 3 Motorsport 1m17.967s +0.8368s 53
13 Salvador De Alba JHDD 1m17.969s +0.8388s 35
14 Yuven Sundaramoorthy Pabst Racing 1m18.034s +0.9042s 66
15 Charles Finelli FatBoy Racing 1m20.6588s +3.5286s 56