Home Featured Malukas doubles up for second Indy Lights pole of Portland weekend

Malukas doubles up for second Indy Lights pole of Portland weekend

by Craig Woollard

Photo: Gavin Baker Photography/Road to Indy

HMD Motorsports’ David Malukas will start the second Indy Lights race of the weekend at Portland International Raceway from pole, repeating his Friday qualifying performance.

The second 30-minute qualifying session featured Malukas towards the top of the timesheet throughout, and he set his fastest lap partway through his second run.

Times didn’t improve for most of the 11 runners after that, and Malukas’s best effort was a tenth up on Global Racing Group with HMD driver Linus Lundqvist.

Benjamin Pedersen concludes a HMD-stable 1-2-3, ahead of Andretti Autosport’s trio of driver.

Malukas’s main title rival Kyle Kirkwood headed the charge, 0.1619 seconds off the top spot after briefly sitting in first place, while Robert Megennis was the one driver to improve with his final effort to take fifth. Danial Frost rounded out the top six.

HMD debutant Manuel Sulaiman took seventh ahead of Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Sting Ray Robb.

Andretti Steinbrenner’s Devlin DeFrancesco and long-awaited debutant Rasmus Lindh (Juncos) will start on the fifth row – the latter just shy of half a second off pole.

Carlin’s sole entry of Christian Bogle rounded out the 11 runners, nine-tenths slower than Lindh in front.

Qualifying results

Pos Name Team Time Gap Laps
1 David Malukas HMD Motorsports 1m03.5727s 20
2 Linus Lundqvist Global Racing Group w/ HMD 1m03.6729s +0.1002s 20
3 Benjamin Pedersen Global Racing Group w/ HMD 1m03.6870s +0.1143s 19
4 Kyle Kirkwood Andretti Autosport 1m03.7346s +0.1619s 21
5 Robert Megennis Andretti Autosport 1m03.8560s +0.2833s 20
6 Danial Frost Andretti Autosport 1m03.9009s +0.3282s 19
7 Manuel Sulaiman HMD Motorsports 1m04.0018s +0.4291s 20
8 Sting Ray Robb Juncos Racing 1m04.0202s +0.4475s 19
9 Devlin DeFrancesco Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport 1m04.0346s +0.4619s 21
10 Rasmus Lindh Juncos Racing 1m04.0747s +0.5020s 19
11 Christian Bogle Carlin w/ JHDD 1m04.9823s +1.4096s 23