After 35 laps of close INDY NXT by Firestone competition at the legendary WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, ABEL Motorsports driver Yuven Sundaramoorthy (No. 22 S Team Motorsports) finished fourth, and teammate Jacob Abel (No. 51 ABEL Construction) returned home. 11th after a frustrating late-race penalty on Sunday.
The duo looked to build on their strong points streak from Saturday, where Abel claimed another podium finish with a third place finish, while Sundaramoorthy capped a career-best fourth place finish.
Abel took green from fourth on the grid and moved into position in the early stages of the race. When a yellow flag came out on lap 16, which bunched up the field, Abel looked to find a way back to the podium. The restart offered little opportunity for progress, but Abel continued to stalk the third-place rider lap after lap, while maintaining the largest reserve of Firestone tire life and passing thrust that he could retain on the newly repaved circuit. .
On lap 28, Abel made a strong run up the long hill leading to Corkscrew, making an inside move on Reese Gold entering the Turn 8 section. But Gold held his own as the duo made contact at the top of the circuit, causing Gold to briefly go off the track.
The incident appeared to be a side-to-side contact, but INDYCAR race officials were quick to determine that Abel owed a penalty for the incident, knocking him out of the podium race to rejoin the field in 13th place. He was able to make up two places in the final laps of the race, but ultimately qualified in a frustrating 11th place.
For his teammate Sundaramoorthy, the second race marked even more progress and confidence from the young rookie, as he put in a blistering race to go from sixth place at the start to fourth place at the end, equaling his career-best result from Saturday and contributing to its continued rise. career in the INDY NXT competition.
“I’m happy with the race and I think we got everything we could out of the car,” said Sundaramoorthy, who recently closed out his engineering career at SAE in Wisconsin, taking an impressive third place in the electric car competition. “We were on old tires and everyone around us was on new tires, but I think we still had quite a bit of pace on the field, so I was happy with that. I got close to Bryce Aron (in third place) a couple of times, but it’s very difficult with the (aero) wash here. He had a great career; He really he didn’t make mistakes. You need a mistake here to make a move and I didn’t get anything out of him there. Overall, I am very happy with this weekend and very eager to get back to racing at Mid-Ohio in a couple of weeks.”
“We were a lot faster than Reese and in hindsight I probably should have been a little more patient, but it’s impossible to overtake this track,” Abel said. “So she was trying to do the move whenever she could. The move was very similar to what happened to me yesterday, and I feel like if Reese wanted to back off, she could easily do it, but she chose to completely turn into me. And that destroyed him, so I think that’s why the penalty was called, so it was very frustrating. But we will continue forward, we have some ground to make up now and that is our maximum effort: to make the most of the next few weekends here in the championship.”
ABEL Motorsports thanks partners ABEL Construction Company, Advance Ready Mix, Boyd Cat®, S Team Motorsports and OMP for their continued support.
Next up for ABEL Motorsports and the INDY NXT by Firestone Grand Prix at Mid-Ohio, Sunday, July 7 at 11:15 a.m. ET. The race will be broadcast live in the U.S. on Peacock, while international viewers will be able to watch on INDYCARLIVE, with INDYCAR Radio available on indycar.com and on Sirius XM.
Abel Motorsports PR
Post Views: 1
Keynote USA
For the Latest Sports News, Follow Keynote USA Sports on Twitter.