Chadwick claims maiden Indy Nxt pole position

Photo: Joe Skibinski

Jamie Chadwick claimed her maiden Indy Nxt pole position in a delayed qualifying session at Road America.

The Andretti Global driver pipped Josh Pierson to the top of the times with her final lap in qualifying. 

A red flag period during which the session clock continued to count down meant Chadwick’s group had just two attempts at setting laps at a representative pace, and Chadwick went quickest on both occasions. Her second effort beat team-mate Louis Foster’s benchmark from the first group and so earned her pole.

Group one was a relatively simple affair. Foster topped the times early on and continued to improve his pace.

He ended qualifying with a 1m51.0541s as his best laptime, over two tenths of a second clear of Abel Motorsports’ Jacob Abel.

HMD Motorsports’ Caio Collet had a few wide moments during the session, but there were no major incidents in group one.

Collet ended the session third quickest, ahead of team-mates Callum Hedge and Myles Rowe.

In group two, it was Michael d’Orlando who set the pace in the opening laps before Lindsay Brewer spun into the gravel at turn one with nine minutes left on the clock.

As the entire field had managed to set a lap by this point, the clock continued to tick down. There was less than four minutes left when green flags waved again.

Most of the field were able to complete two additional flying laps. Yuven Sundaramoorthy crossed the timing line first and briefly went to the top, only to be demoted down to third by Reece Gold and Chadwick.

Gold and Josh Pierson both then improved on their final laps to provisionally be fastest in the group, until Chadwick crossed the line with a 1m51.0333s to beat them and Foster for her maiden pole.

Pierson was second fastest in the group, ahead of Gold, Bryce Aron and d’Orlando, who only got one flying lap in rather than two after the restart.

Qualifying results