Collet quickest between red flags in Indy Nxt FP2 at Mid-Ohio

Photo: Joe Skibinski

HMD Motorsports’ Caio Collet ended a disrupted second Indy Nxt practice session at Mid-Ohio on top of the order.

A late red flag caused by his team-mate Nolan Allaer interrupted a period of laptimes tumbling throughout the field.

Collet was in first place at the time of the stoppage, just 0.0129 seconds ahead of his title rival Dennis Hauger. Although there was a restart after Allaer’s car was cleared, as there was less than a minute left on the clock nobody was able to improve in the time they had for one lap.

Allaer had set the pace in the opening laps, before Andretti Global’s Hauger took over the top spot. Through the remainder of the session, Hauger and Collet swapped times at the top of the order, lowering the fastest lap to the point where they went below the track record set by Collet in qualifying last year.

Lapimes were still in the 1m11s range when the first red flag period occurred, instigated by HMD’s returnee Juan Manuel Correa crashing. He was able to make it back to the pits, and repaira were quickly made. He returned to track after being held in the pitlane for an additional period as a penalty for being responsible for the stoppage.

Hauger and Collet continued to trade fastest laps after that until Collet posted a 1m10.0372s just before the second red flag period. Allaer had gone off at turn nine in a similar incident to in FP1 the previous day.

Abel Motorsports’ repeated his FP1 placing of third, only 0.1214s slower than Collet’s record pace, and Andretti’s Salvador de Alba was 0.2992s off the top in fourth.

Ricardo Escotto (Andretti Cape) was the only other driver within half a second of Collet, with Hauger’s team-mate and other title rival Lochie Hughes down in sixth but improving on his FP1 benchmark and Abel Motorsports with Force Indy’s Myles Rowe struggling to 18th place more than 1.6s off the pace of the drivers he usually matches.

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