Kaiser Cruises To Toronto Indy Lights Score
TORONTO – Kyle Kaiser extended his Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires championship lead with a comfortable victory Saturday at Exhibition Place during the Honda Indy Toronto.
Kaiser’s second win of the season, combined with a mistake by rival Matheus Leist, allowed him to extend his championship lead to 38 points with only five races remaining. The series champion will claim a Mazda Scholarship valued at $1 million to ensure entry into three Verizon IndyCar Series races in 2018, including the 102nd Indianapolis 500.
Carlin’s Zachary Claman DeMelo finished second after a race-long battle with Uruguay’s Santi Urrutia and Colton Herta.
Just a few hours after securing his third pole of the season with a new qualifying lap record of 1:05.3511, Kaiser made the jump from pole position and headed into turn one with a clear advantage over his pursuers. Leist, who qualified second, immediately lost a position to Claman DeMelo, which allowed Kaiser even more leeway to make a break at the front. He needed no second bidding.
With two laps of the 1.786-mile temporary circuit in the books, Kaiser was already more than 2.4 seconds to the good.
Leist, meanwhile, was clearly struggling to hold off a gaggle of cars headed by Urrutia, local Toronto favorite Dalton Kellett and Californian Neil Alberico. Then, on lap four, he left his braking a tad too late at turn eight, missed his apex and clattered into the tire barrier on the exit of the corner. Farther back in the pack, Frenchman Nico Jamin was unable to avoid contact with the stricken Carlin car. He, too, was out of the race with broken suspension.
After a full-course caution to clear away the debris, Kaiser took off again in the lead and was never seriously challenged. The third-year Indy Lights veteran extended his lead to more than 6.5 seconds before easing off in the closing stages to take the checkered flag 3.6118 seconds to the good.
“It’s amazing – this is my first win on a street course,” said Kaiser. “So now I can say I’ve won on an oval, a road course and a street course and this means a lot. Toronto is one of the better street courses to pass on but if you get a gap, it is really hard to get around someone. The team was telling me the gap every lap, so I knew who was behind me and how far back they were and I was using that to gauge how hard to push. It was a very conscious race, focusing on what I had to do but also being aware of what was going on behind me. But I try not to over think it and go into every race weekend to win. Some weekends, you don’t have the setup so you focus on not getting frustrated and running with what you have. This weekend, we had the fastest car so we maximized what we had. All the stars are aligning.”
Urrutia and Claman DeMelo enjoyed an exciting tussle for second place following the restart before the Canadian reasserted himself and maintained position until the finish. Herta, meanwhile, after slipping from eighth on the grid to 10th in the early stages, made remarkable progress at the restart, rising quickly to fourth place. Herta, the youngest driver in the field at age 17, then put the pressure on Urrutia, posting the fastest lap of the race en route to his third consecutive top-four finish.
Aaron Telitz, last year’s champion in the Pro Mazda Championship Presented by Cooper Tires, finished a lonely fifth for Belardi Auto Racing.
The finish:
Kyle Kaiser, Zachary Claman DeMelo, Santi Urrutia, Colton Herta, Aaron Telitz, Juan Piedrahita, Nicolas Dapero, Neil Alberico, Garth Rickards, Ryan Norman, Shelby Blackstock, Dalton Kellett, Matheus Leist, Nico Jamin.
Source :speedsport.com
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