DEForce Racing’s Nicolas Giaffone takes pole for the Freedom 75

Photo: Gavin Baker Photography

DEForce Racing’s Nicola Giaffone claimed his maiden USF2000 pole in qualifying for the Freedom 75 at Indianapolis Raceway Park.

The championship’s sole oval qualifying session of the season took on the format of each driver going out one at a time to complete a two-lap run. Their order was set by reversing the points table, so Jay Howard Driver Development’s G3 Argyros was first out on track.

Lucas Fecury and then Xavier Kokai was next, with both going to the top. Velocity Racing Development driver Kokai had an average pace of 115.318mph over his two laps.

JHDD’s Tanner DeFabis raised the bar to 116.094mph, DC Autosport’s Carson Etter was the following driver and went third fastest, then DeFabis was beaten as Giaffone averaged 116.636mph. He was 0.198 seconds faster in completing the two laps, which set a new qualifying record.

The drivers that went out after did not challenge the top five poitions, although impressively DEForce’s Maxwell Jamieson was slowest on his first lap and a rapid second lap could do little to change his position. The second lap was the faster one for all drivers, and following Jamieson was team-mate Quinn Armstrong who averaged 115.892mph to provisionally hold third place.

That became fourth when DC’s Ayrton Houk set two laps at a speed of over 116.5mph and went second fastest.

There were high expectations for the final four drivers, the top four in the championship, but they struggled. VRD’s Max Taylor could only go eighth fastest on lap one but brought himself up to fourth on lap two, Pabst’s Sam Corry similarly went from ninth to sixth as he had a slow opening lap, then JHDD’s Evagoras Papasavvas could do no better than sixth either.

Pabst’s points leader Max Garcia fared worse as the last one out, looking set for 10th place on lap one and only improving to seventh on lap two.

Qualifying results