Clark pips Elkin to pole for USF Pro 2000’s Freedom 90 race

Photo: Gavin Baker Photography

Mac Clark claimed pole for the Freedom 90, USF Pro 2000’s sole oval race of the season, in qualifying at Lucas Oil Raceway.

A weather-disrupted schedule led to USFP2000 having its qualifying session before USF2000’s, and therefore facing a less rubbered in track, and the traditional oval qualifying format was used of a two-lap run.

Drivers headed out one-by-one in reverse championship order, meaning Turn 3 Motorsport’s Brady Golan headed out first after making his series debut last time out at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

He laid down an impressive benchmark straight away, with his two-lap time being 39.7819 seconds (with sub-20s laps crucial for any pole position aspirant) at an average of 124.157mph.

Carson Etter was next, then 2024 Freedom 75 winner Tanner DeFabis. He looked uncomfortable with his car on the middle line, and then he lost control of it. It snapped, then after he had reclaimed control it had drifted to the high line and then hit the barriers hard enough to heavily damage the rear of the car.

There was an 11-minute break before qualifying could continue, and the drivers that followed were slower than Golan on both of their laps.

Series veteran Charles Finelli found himself in second place, having gone sub-40s with a 123.496mph qualifying run.

Later on, Nicholas Monteiro went third fastest. While one lap was a 19.9951s, the other was over 20s and so he did not reach a 123mph average.

Jace Denmark and Michael Costello were the next drivers, and both briefly held fourth. Then came Max Taylor, who looked like an immediate pole threat as his opening lap was 19.9873s. He improved on lap two as well, but came just 0.051mph short of matching the provisional poleman.

Jacob Douglas was slow but did enough to slit into fifth, then came USFP2000’s most in-form road course drivers.

Clark showed his pace elsewhere could translate to ovals, as a 19.8225s was followed by a 19.6393s to form a pole-winning 125.164mph average.

Ariel Elkin and Alessandro de Tullio then both beat Clark’s pace, but only on their second laps. There was an impressive lap one by Elkin, a 19.8662s, but combined with the following 19.6009s it left him 0.0053s off Clark.

De Tullio was fastest of anyone by setting a 19.584s, but had barely scraped into sub-20s territory on lap one and qualified third.

The final driver was points leader Max Garcia, and he had incredibly consistent pace but his failure to go sub-19.7s meant he could only qualify fourth ahead of Golan, Taylor and Finelli.

Monteiro was the last driver within a second of Clark in eighth place.

Preceding qualifying were two pre-event test sessions. Garcia set a 20.0455s to lead DeFabbis by 0.1481s and Taylor by 0.1931s in session one, then the pace was lowered considerably in session two. He posted a 19.6015s, edging de Tullio by 0.0294s, Elkin by 0.0552s and Taylor by 0.0602s. Garcia and Golan were also within 0.2s of the pace.

Qualifying results