Photo: Joe Skibinski
Indy Nxt’s race at Mid-Ohio last weekend was interrupted by an early red flag period, which proved advantageous for winner Dennis Hauger.
The Andretti Global driver started on pole ahead of Caio Collet (HMD Motorsports) and Lochie Hughes (Andretti), and just 1.1 seconds split the trio on lap four when the race was stopped due to a big crash.
During the lengthy red flag period, there was time to analyse the opening laps. At the front of the field, the chasers had the early grip advantage but Collet had to look behind as much as ahead. When the race restarted, Hauger had a pace advantage he was able to manage throughout to avoid being attacked.
“It’s a tough track to overtake. And at the beginning of the race, I thought I could get [Dennis] at the end,” said Collet, who finished second.
“He was struggling a little bit more than me. But all of a sudden he started pushing a little bit more, and then the gap was increasing and increasing. Towards the end I was able to match his fastest lap, but still on average pace he was just a little bit quicker than us today.”
Hughes, who came home third, added: “It was tricky. I actually felt better before the red flag. Caio and Dennis seemed they were struggling a little bit to get the tyre temperature. And honestly it felt pretty good. Then on the restart and for most of the race I was just following Caio the whole time.
“We’d get a lot of aero [wash] or understeer through turn one just following him. And then just repeated that over and over again. We’d fall back, catch up a little bit. Then at the end, once I knew kind of I wasn’t going to get Caio, we just tried to bring it home, make no mistakes. For some reason my back started hurting as well, so I was pretty happy to see the chequered flag.”
Hauger’s post-race thoughts pointed to data analysis pre-race and during the stoppage being key for making his day easier from pole.
“It was an awesome day. Great car out there. We really nailed the balance today, which is nice. After Road America, a bit of a struggle there, and we really just put things together this weekend,” he said.
“Today we tried to predict the balance, and the track. It changed a lot throughout the weekend, so I’m really happy we went in the right direction there and got that win.”
During the stoppage he was “checking with [my] engineer, going through a few things” to avoid the pressure faced on the first start.
“It was not the easiest first few laps for me, but once we got into a rhythm it was pretty good. It was kind of nice in the restart. I knew what I had to do to build that up more quickly. And from then on, it was just about managing and trying to keep it clean.”