This afternoon’s thrilling Cooper Tires Freedom 90, Round Nine of the Pro Mazda Championship Presented by Cooper Tires, provided a rousing climax to the traditional 70th “Day (Night) Before the 500” at Lucas Oil Raceway. Malaysian Weiron Tan led every inch of the 90-lap race around the 0.686-mile oval in front of an appreciative crowd in perfect weather conditions, but his eventual margin of victory was a mere 0.4261 seconds over American Will Owen (Juncos Racing). It was the third win in succession at Lucas Oil Raceway for Andretti Autosport.
“It’s really unfortunate the way that our race here at Lucas Oil Raceway Park turned out,” added Kellett. “The team gave me a great car and we were able to put the No. 28 Mazda on the front row beside my teammate Ron (Tan). I think, given the pace we had, we had the car to beat to fight for the win. Unfortunately, on the second lap, I took a little bit too much in Turn 3 and I made contact with the wall coming out of Turn 4, and that caused some suspension damage. After that, it was pretty much all I could do to keep the car off the wall – it was quite the ride. About one-third of the way through the race, while I was going for a pass, the car following me thought he was able to go in the same space as mine which resulted in me getting spun and unfortunately collecting another car who was on the high line. Overall, an unfortunate end to the weekend, but we have to put our heads down, take what we learned here and apply it to Iowa when we head there, and have a good weekend in Toronto, which is our next race coming up next month.”
“That was a really incredible race,” stated Tan. “We made a good start and pushed on from there with very consistent times. We pulled quite a big gap before the caution came out. Once it went green, it was just a matter of being consistent, to not force myself to make any mistakes, to make clean passes on traffic and finish the race. I was really hoping for the race to finish! The Andretti team gave me a really good race car; we’ve been fast since we got here. This will help me in the championship, since every bit helps, and now we look forward to Toronto! We need to score some really good points and hope the championship comes to us.”
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