Leist And Claman De Melo Victorious In Road America Indy Lights Action

by Paul Gohde

Race 1, Saturday: Matheus Leist took advantage of his pole starting spot and won the first of two Indy Lights by Cooper Tires races at Road America Saturday. Leist’s win was his second in the series as he led all 20-laps for the Trevor Carlin team. The 19-year-old from Brazil had previously captured the Freedom 100 in May at Indianapolis.

“The car was so good. We got a great start and managed to open a gap over the others and were able to stretch that by the end,” explained the winner whose final margin over runner-up Santiago Urrutia was 6.16 seconds. “Now we’re just 21 points out of the lead for the championship.”

Urrutia, the 2016 Lights Rookie of the Year, came from his tenth starting spot to score a podium finish but didn’t seem very happy. “Finishing second is no good. I want to win the championship but you’ve got to win races (to be champion), said Urrutia who finished second for Belardi Auto Racing, and was just two points behind in the 2016 championship despite winning four races and grabbing seven podium finishes.

I try to be aggressive, but I know I also have to finish races,” noted third-place finisher Kyle Kaiser. “I needed to be aggressive on the last lap,” where he missed a second-place finish by just 0.08 sec.

Race 2, Sunday: After dominating Saturday’s Indy Light’s Race 1 at Road America, Team Carlin won again Sunday in Race 2, this time with 18-year-old Zachary Claman De Melo scoring a 10.5 second win over series’ point leader Kyle Kaiser who held off Colton Herta and Saturday’s winner Matheus Leist.

“If I got to the front I pretty much knew I could drive away just like Matheus (his Carlin teammate) did in Race 1,” explained the young Canadian who started fourth and moved to the front spot on lap five with a pass on pole-winner Herta.” Winning my first series’ race, and doing it here at Road America, was great.”

Kaiser, driving for Juncos’ team, started 3rd and got past Leist early on after what he described as “hectic early laps”. “I didn’t get a good jump, but was able to get ahead of Matheus and had an opportunity to take second from Herta later and worked to hold him off after that.”

Herta, who started on the pole, admitted to making “a little mistake and Kyle got past me.” Kaiser, Herta and Leist spent the rest of the race dueling for a podium finish as DeMalo drove away from the pack.

“I was pushing every lap to make my lead greater. But I didn’t want to make any mistakes,” the Montreal native said. And he certainly avoided doing that.

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