Harvey Wins Freedom 100-Takes Point’s Lead

 Jack Harvey in victory lane at Indianapolis after winning the Freedom 100 Indy Lights race.  [Russ Lake Photo]

After battling pole-winner Ethan Ringel for 37 laps, Englishman Jack Harvey hung on to capture the Freedom 100 Presented by Allied Building Products Friday on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval.

Harvey, whose Schmidt Peterson Mazda traded the lead with Ringel six times, took the point for good on lap 34 and cruised to the win as the race ended under a yellow flag following the only incident of the day.

Jack Harvey takes the checkers winning the Freedom 100. [Russ Lake Photo]

Jack Harvey in victory lane at Indianapolis after winning the Freedom 100 Indy Lights race. [Russ Lake Photo]

Battle for the lead in the Freedom 100 at Indianapolis. [Russ Lake Photo]

“I knew Ethan was going to be fast. I was happy that he was on the pole. On the first lap I had a pretty good Turn One, and that’s what we spoke about, driving around the outside if I had to,” explained Harvey who led just 10 of the 40 laps. “I knew I was good at that point; the car still felt good and I think Ethan was just saving his tires. You want to win the race and maybe don’t want to lead on the last lap, but then the caution came out and you want to be in front.”

For Harvey, this was his first Freedom 100 win and his sixth career Indy Lights victory. He also won one of the doubleheader races on the IMS road course earlier in the month. He becomes the first driver to win on both the IMS oval and current road course configuration.

Ringel, who hopes to compete in the IndyCar series someday, wasn’t disappointed that he couldn’t make a run at teammate Harvey at the end.

“I can’t be disappointed with the finish that I had. I finished second in the Freedom 100, and it’s my first time here and my first time on an oval. I was tucking underneath Jack (Harvey) for the last couple of laps. I knew I had the draft on him and I knew I had the speed on him,” noted the New York native. “I think, without the yellow flag, I probably would have won the race-I think.”

20-year-old British rookie Ed Jones relinquished his series’ points lead to Harvey after spinning his Carlin team entry, hitting the SAFER Barrier in Turn 4.

Finishing behind the leaders were Scott Anderson and rookies RC Enerson and Kyle Kaiser.

Schmidt Peterson Motorsports with Curb-Agajanian swept the top four finishing spots. Schmidt-owned cars have won the Freedom 100 eight times since 2004.

This was the first Mazda-powered race at IMS.

Former Marussia F1 driver Max Chilton, who also drives for the Carlin squad, did not make the grid for the start of the race.

And for Harvey there was the hope that the win would lead to bigger things in the future.

“I still haven’t found the words to truly describe it apart from the first thing that I said to Sam (car-owner Schmidt) when I saw him: ‘Does this mean I can drive your Indy car?’ We’re working toward that.”

Paul Gohde

Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.

The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.

Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.

He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.

Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”

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