Cape’s d’Orlando fastest in USF2000’s second New Jersey qualifying

Photo: Gavin Baker Photography / Road to Indy

Cape Motorsports’ Michael d’Orlando took pole for the second USF2000 race at New Jersey Motorsports Park by a tiny margin.

While it was a closely-contested qualifying session on Sunday, there was actually very few improvements by drivers in the session with limited space for flying laps on a busy track.

Pabst Racing’s Yuven Sundaramoorthy initially set the pace with a 1m17.4918s lap, but he then couldn’t go faster than that and was shuffled down the order.

His team-mate Josh Pierson was the first to push him from the top, and DEForce Racing duo Kiko Porto and Nolan Siegel quickly demoted him too.

The positions at the top went unchanged until with seven minutes to go Jace Denmark found clear air on a fresh set of tyres and leapt up to third for Pabst.

A minute later Porto took provisional pole, with Pierson improving but not reclaiming top spot. Siegel then lowered the benchmark with five minutes to go by a hundredth of a second, and he looked set for pole when d’Orlando – the next frontrunner with clear air – could only go fifth fastest with his improvement.

However d’Orlando then set a second consecutive flying lap and that took him to pole by 0.0941s over Siegel.

Porto and Pierson will start on the second row, while Turn 3 Motorsport’s Josh Green rose up to fifth place at the very end. Denmark qualified sixth ahead of DEForce’s Prescott Campbell, while Sundaramoorthy ended up half a second off the pace in eighth.

Qualifying results