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David Malsher-Lopez

Indy NXT Indianapolis: Nannini holds off Foster for victory

The initial start was waved off as Nannini was admonished for bringing the field to the green too slowly, rather than at pace car speed. Then the next NXT start was called off because he went too early.

Once all was in order, Nannini nailed the start and Louis Foster moved his Andretti Autosport machine into second as his teammate and front-row starter Hunter McElrea dropped to fifth, behind the HMD Motorsports cars of Christian Rasmussen and Kyffin Simpson moved up to third and fourth. Josh Green (HMD) and James Roe (Andretti) ran sixth and seventh, while the second Juncos Hollinger car of Rasmus Lindh had moved up from 10th to eighth.

Simpson passed Rasmussen around the outside into Turn 7 on Lap 7 to take third place. He then tried to close the three-second gap Foster, who was 1.5s behind Nannini.

But in fact it was Foster who eased away from Simpson while closing on the leader. By Lap 15 he had the gap down to seven-tenths of a second, but Nannini had enough pace to ease away once more. Still, by Lap 20 Foster was a healthy five seconds ahead of Simpson, who had an identical margin over a mighty scrap between Rasmussen and McElrea.

On Lap 25, Foster was back onto Nannini’s tail after the Argentine-Italian locked his tires under braking for Turn 1, but the JHR driver kept his head and kept the lead.

On Lap 31, McElrea finally managed to stay alongside Ramsussen – from Turn 12 through to Turn 2! – to complete a pass and then eased away from the HMD driver.

Foster piled on the pressure in the final five laps, and again Nannini was locking front tires here and there. In fact on Lap 33 he had to hug the inside line into Turn 7 to fend off his pursuer, and the same on the 36th and final lap.

But Nannini did just enough, through pace and car placement, to take the checkered flag 0.39s ahead of Foster.

Their epic battle pulled them 10sec clear of Simpson with McElrea and Rasmussen completing the top five.

P

Name

Laps

LapTime

FL

FTime

Diff

Led

ST

Team

1

Matteo Nannini

35

1:18.5037

7

1:16.9591

LAP 35

35

1

Juncos Hollinger Racing

2

Louis Foster

35

1:18.4479

9

1:16.9778

0.3909

 

3

Andretti Autosport

3

Kyffin Simpson

35

1:18.5112

11

1:17.2479

10.1974

 

4

HMD Motorsports

4

Hunter McElrea

35

1:17.5757

11

1:17.4217

15.4142

 

2

Andretti Autosport

5

Christian Rasmussen

35

1:18.0775

20

1:17.5120

18.7555

 

6

HMD Motorsports

6

Josh Green

35

1:18.4259

12

1:17.5201

19.6161

 

5

HMD Motorsports

7

James Roe

35

1:18.8092

29

1:17.6518

21.2875

 

8

Andretti Autosport

8

Rasmus Lindh

35

1:18.4554

8

1:17.7281

24.1775

 

10

Juncos Hollinger Racing

9

Jacob Abel

35

1:18.8414

20

1:17.8113

26.7275

 

9

Abel Motorsports

10

Enaam Ahmed

35

1:18.9417

8

1:17.6990

30.3672

 

11

Cape Motorsports

11

Danial Frost

35

1:18.7060

7

1:17.8115

32.1352

 

12

HMD Motorsports

12

Colin Kaminsky

35

1:18.7844

12

1:17.8977

33.3460

 

13

Abel Motorsports

13

Nolan Siegel

35

1:18.7694

10

1:17.7598

34.1163

 

16

HMD Motorsports

14

Jagger Jones

35

1:18.8446

11

1:17.6908

37.5289

 

17

Cape Motorsports

15

Jamie Chadwick

35

1:18.6794

15

1:17.9199

38.9149

 

14

Andretti Autosport

16

Reece Gold

35

1:18.7177

12

1:18.0604

43.8057

 

15

HMD Motorsports

17

Josh Pierson

35

1:19.0556

15

1:18.0464

46.2890

 

7

HMD Motorsports

18

Christian Bogle

35

1:19.7579

12

1:18.2849

63.6811

 

18

HMD Motorsports

 

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