IndyCar support series complete pre-season testing in Florida

Photo: Gavin Baker Photography

IndyCar’s support series were in action in Florida this week to complete their pre-season test schedule before racing gets underway this weekend.

Indy Nxt teams were at Homestead-Miami Speedway for a ‘private’ test, while the three rungs beneath it were all at Sebring.

USF Pro 2000 spread their test across two days, with two 45-minute sessions on Monday and two on Tuesday.

Pabst Racing’s Myles Rowe was fastest in the opening session, setting a 1m59.207s lap to head DEForce Racing’s Kiko Porto by 0.058 seconds. Exclusive Autosport’s Yuven Sundaramoorthy did not leave the pits and team-mate Lindsay Brewer failed to lap at a representative pace.

Lirim Zendeli led a TJ Speed one-two in session two, bettering Francesco Pizzi by 0.021s. Along with team-mate Christian Weir, they then missed the second day of action.

Rowe started Tuesday’s action by lowering the pace into the 1m58s, with the top six all improving and Rowe’s team-mate Jace Denmark getting within 0.086s of the pace. Sundaramoorthy failed to get on track again, and this time was joined by Turn 3 Motorport’s Jonathan Browne in remaining garage-bound.

The pace was slower in the final session, topped by Porto, but four drivers did set their personal best laps at that time while Pabst drivers were absent from proceedings.

Joining Turn 3 for the test was Christian Brooks, who has no racing programme confirmed for 2023, while new team NeoTech Motorsport made its first appearance with Nicholas Monteiro, who graduates from Brazilian Formula 4.

Supporting the USFP2000 action on Monday was the 13-strong USF Juniors contingent, and DEForce’s Nicolas Giaffone was over half a second faster than anyone else in the series’ opening session.

Velocity Racing Development’s Max Taylor was second fastest, and did not improve in the next two sessions, while Exclusive’s Joey Brienza did not make it on track but then set the pace in session two.

He became the only driver to lap in the 2m11s, and was 0.102s faster than DEForce’s Quinn Armstrong, as new team-mate Giovanni Cabrera sat out the action.

Giaffone was fastest again in session three, and 0.045s down on the absent Brienza’s session two benchmark. The Velocity drivers had all of their laps invalidated over a rule violation.

USF2000 took to the track on Tuesday, and Pabst’s yet-to-be confirmed driver Simon Sikes was the man to beat. He topped session one by 0.654s, session two by 0.160s and then skipped session three as DC Autorsport’s Ethan Ho set the pace.

Brienza and Chase Gardner got seat time with Exclusive, as well as their new signing Avery Towns, while Zack Ping did a session for Velocity despite his brother Noah being signed to the team for USF2000.

Andre Castro returns to the series as a late addition to the 2023 grid at Future Star Racing after racing in USF Juniors last year, and for round one his team-mate will be Trey Burke. Also confirmed only for St. Petersburg is Nicholas d’Orlando at Exclusive.

Testing results