Braden Eves put behind him a sequence of (by his standards) mediocre results of late in this afternoon’s Cooper Tires Indy Pro 2000 Oval Challenge of St. Louis at a sweltering World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Ill. Current championship leader Christian Rasmussen (Jay Howard Driver Development), from Copenhagen, Denmark, finished second ahead of New Zealand’s Hunter McElrea (Pabst Racing).
“We dominated in testing, practice, warm-up,” commented McElrea. “We had the best one-lap speed of anyone, but we made a mistake in our qualifying setup and started fifth.
“That first green lap was madness, guys going three wide. We really had to claw through – I probably underestimated how big the tow was on that first lap. I got into third on the restart from the yellow and I was one of the fastest cars out there – I just wasn’t as close as I needed to be at the end.
“Overall, I’m happy with the weekend, it’s another podium, good points and we know we have good pace. Considering all the bad luck we had in the middle of the year, we’ll take that and keep going.”
McElrea, who had won the most recent race at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in early July, ran a relatively lonely race to finish third, well clear of Roe, who held off a determined challenge from Indy Pro 2000 debutant Nolan Siegel (DEForce Racing), from Palo Alto, Calif.
The Indy Pro 2000 Championship contenders will continue next weekend, August 28/29, for a triple-header road course event at New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville, N.J.
Provisional championship points after 13 of 18 rounds (Top 5):
1/ Christian Rasmussen, 345
2/ Braden Eves, 313
3/ Reece Gold, 274
4= Hunter McElrea, 264
5= Artem Petrov, 264
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