Dennis Hauger scores second Indy Nxt pole at Barber

Photo: Joe Skibinski

Dennis Hauger took his second Indy Nxt pole position on a drying Barber Motorsports Park circuit.

Rain before the start of the session meant the first qualifying group were setting their times on a drying track. By the time the second group hit the track, conditions had improved for lap times to be 12 seconds quicker.

Haugher, out in the second group, managed a time of 1m12.7705s, 0.5964s quicker than Evagoras Papasavvas who finished second in the group.

Max Taylor topped the group early on and was still running second when a spin put him in the gravel late in the session. He brought out the red flag and lost his two quickest lap times. That dropped him to ninth in the group, ahead of only Jack Miller who was barred from taking part in qualifying as a penalty for an incident at St. Petersburg.

It was Caio Collet who topped the order in the first qualifying group.

Lochie Hughes set the pace early on, ahead of Collet and Jordan Missig, but slipped backwards as Collet found improvements. The HMD Motorsports driver ended qualifying with a time of 1m24.8394s, 0.6043s ahead of Hughes.

Collet will start from second on the grid, just behind Hauger and ahead of Papasavvas and Hughes. 

The first qualifying session also ended in an incident, but one that didn’t bring out the red flags. Nolan Allaer came to a stop at the edge of the pit lane after a spin and could not get going again. The incident came at the end of qualifying and did not impact any runs.

Myles Rowe and Bryce Aron finished third in their groups and will line up fifth and sixth on the grid respectively, ahead of Josh Pierson and James Roe. Liam Sceats and Seb Murray complete the top 10 on the grid.

Qualifying results