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HMD Motorsports dominates Indy Lights qualifying at Portland

by Ida Wood

Photo: Gavin Baker Photography/Road to Indy

HMD Motorsports’ fleet of supported cars were unstoppable on the first day of Indy Lights action at Portland International Raceway, culminating in pole for David Malukas.

Linus Lundqvist, who is co-run by Global Racing Group and HMD, set the pace in the two pre-event test sessions, while Malukas was fastest in free practice by 0.1836 seconds over Lundqvist.

The single practice session featured several names rising to the top, with Lundqvist, Malukas and Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport’s Devlin DeFrancesco trading fastest laps between each other a lot of the time.

It wasn’t too different a story in qualifying, as Malukas and Lundqvist improved through much of the session while leading the way on pace.

Again, Malukas had the advantage at the end and this time it was by a slimmer 0.0875s for his fifth pole of the season.

As in practice, Lundqvist’s team-mate Benjamin Pedersen was able to get himself into third, and on his final lap Malukas’s debuting HMD team-mate Manuel Sulaiman secured fourth place and was just 0.02008s off pole.

Title contender Kyle Kirkwood was the lead Andretti Autosport car in fifth, ahead of team-mates Robert Megennis and Danial Frost, while Rasmus Lindh beat his Juncos Racing team-mate Sting Ray Robb in his maiden qualifying session.

There were only 11 cars participating in Friday’s action, as Pserra Racing’s Antonio Serravalle was absent. He will also miss the next round at Laguna Seca.

“We will be shifting our focus to the 2022 season,” Serravalle explained.

“Pserra Racing will miss the next two rounds on the West Coast of the United States before returning for the final event weekend at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and the annual Chris Griffis Test at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“We are working hard to add a second car to the program and taking this step back will allow Pserra Racing to evaluate, plan, prepare and ultimately compete for years to come.”

Qualifying results

Pos Name Team Time Gap Laps
1 David Malukas HMD Motorsports 1m04.7747s 19
2 Linus Lundqvist Global Racing Group w/ HMD 1m03.8622s +0.0875s 19
3 Benjamin Pedersen Global Racing Group w/ HMD 1m03.9223s +0.1476s 19
4 Manuel Sulaiman HMD Motorsports 1m03.9755s +0.2008s 18
5 Kyle Kirkwood Andretti Autosport 1m04.0377s +0.2630s 19
6 Robert Megennis Andretti Autosport 1m04.1861s +0.4114s 19
7 Danial Frost Andretti Autosport 1m04.3166s +0.5419s 18
8 Devlin DeFrancesco Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport 1m04.3942s +0.6195s 18
9 Rasmus Lindh Juncos Racing 1m04.4564s +0.6817s 17
10 Sting Ray Robb Juncos Racing 1m12.3947s +1.1482s 18
11 Christian Bogle Carlin w/ JHDD 1m05.3820s +1.6073s 16