The third time was the charm for Alessandro de Tullio.
After starting on pole for the third consecutive race, de Tullio delivered a flag-to-flag performance out front to capture his first Indy NXT win in the nightcap of the doubleheader weekend at Barber Motorsports Park.
The Argentine was under pressure from rival Max Taylor, who he collided with while battling for the win on Saturday, throughout the entire 30 laps, but held serve to collect the checkered flag by 0.3635s on the 2.3-mile, 17-turn natural terrain road course.
“Yeah, it’s incredible,” de Tullio said. “To be here, I want to thank, firstly, the whole #14 crew for such a great car. We knew we could have done two races ago in Arlington. We could have done it yesterday, but sometimes that’s the way that racing goes. The most important thing is that we kept our heads down and kept focus, and the third time is a charm, I guess.”
Nikita Johnson finished third, ahead of the HMD Motorsports duo of Enzo Fittipaldi and Tymek Kucharczyk in fourth and fifth, respecitively.
The performance by de Tullio not only gives the series its fourth winner in as many races, but also handed AJ Foyt Racing its first win in Indy NXT since 2002 (A.J. Foyt IV, Texas Motor Speedway).
Johnson retains the championship lead (168 points), with a 24-point gap over Taylor, with Kucharczyk 33 points behind in third. Fittipaldi is 39 points behind, while de Tullio moving up from 13th to fifth at 61 points back.
The Race
It was a good jump by de Tullio at the wave of the green flag, but there was chaos behind moments later as Abel Motorsports teammates Max Garcia and Myles Rowe came together.
Rowe, who started seventh, dove to the inside of Garcia, who started fifth, entering Turn 13. However, Rowe clipped the curbing, which sent him into Garcia and led both drivers off course and down the running order with damage. The two continued on, which kept the 30-lap race under green, but Rowe was hit with a 30s stop-and-hold penalty for avoidable contact.
Both de Tullio and Taylor (Andretti Global) began to break away from the field, with the two staying within 0.3s of each other but 2s up on third-place man Johnson (Cape Motorsports Powered by ECR) by Lap 9.
The running order by the halfway point remained with de Tullio and Taylor in first and second, with the duo followed by Johnson, Fittipaldi, and Kucharczyk.
Johnson, the winner of the first race of the doubleheader weekend, began to crawl into the picture a few laps later, closing to within 1.4s of the leaders.
With seven laps to go, Taylor began to apply the pressure on de Tullio, with Johnson within 1s. Fittipaldi also moved to within 1.8s, and built a gap of 1.2s over Kucharczyk in fifth.
The battle at the front began to tighten up even more with four laps to go as Fittipaldi had his HMD Motorsports machine on the rear wing of Johnson, who was within striking distance of Taylor.
Jordan Missig (Abel Motorsports) closed on Kucharczyk for fifth, making a move for the spot on the frontstretch with two laps to go, but unable to secure the spot into Turn 1.
Taylor closed on the final lap on de Tullio, but in the end was left settling for second. As de Tullio crossed the finish line, he yelled out “Vamos” over the radio.
We want your opinion!
What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?
– The Motorsport.com Team
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: motorsport.com
