Max Garcia leads Pabst 1-2 in USF2000’s first qualifying session of 2024

Photo: Gavin Baker Photography

Max Garcia led a Pabst Racing one-two in the first qualifying session of the USF2000 season on the streets of St. Petersburg.

There was very little track activity in the first 10 minutes of the half-hour session, with everyone having only set one lap.

Jay Howard Driver Development’s Evagoras Papasavvas sat on top with a 1m15.7362s lap, with Garcia the only other driver to have gone sub-1m16s with their opening effort. His Pabst team-mates Sam Corry and Hudson Schwartz were third and fourth, and JHDD’s Michael Costello was fifth.

There was drama a few minutes later for Schwartz, and the retrieval of his car meant red flags had to be waved and the session was paused for several minutes.

The pace quickly dropped once drivers headed back out, and with 11 minutes to go Garcia led the way with a 1m13.7359s. He was fastest by 0.2409 seconds over Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing’s Elliot Cox and 0.2569s over Corry. Improving on their fifth laps to to fill the places immediately below them were Papasavvas, Nico Christodoulou, Max Taylor and Jack Jeffers.

Papasavvas got within 0.1643s of Garcia’s provisional pole time while DC Autosport’s Ayrton Houk went sixth fastest with nine minutes remaining, and two-and-a-half minutes later Velocity Racing Development’s Taylor improved to go from seventh to sixth.

Two minutes after that Corry displaced Cox for third place, and two laps later improved again to take second from Papasavvas with a 1m13.4937s.

Garcia had lowered the pace to 1m13.5327s with three-and-a-half minutes to go, and kept his gap at the top at 0.0783s by setting a 1m13.4154s in response to Corry’s pace.

Another improvement from Garcia in the final minute lowered the pole time to 1m13.3313s, and after the chequered flag DEForce Racing’s Nicolas Giaffone went third fastest but was over 0.45s off the pace.

Papasavvas sat out the last five minutes but still qualified fourth, ahead of Cox, VRD’s Christodoulou and Taylor who improved two more times at the end.

Qualifying results