Newgarden Victorious In Freedom 100

Sam Schmidt Motorsports drivers Josef Newgarden and Esteban Guerrieri finished 1-2 in the Freedom 100 Indy Lights Series event Friday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Newgarden led 30 of the 40 laps, averaging 107.817 mph in a race slowed four times for crashes.

Starting second next to pole-sitter Brian Clauson, Newgarden led four times for thirty laps. He dove under Guerrieri entering Turn 3 on lap 15 and held off his teammate until the end. The race finished under caution after a serious incident in Turn1-2 on lap 35.

“This is the largest victory of my career,” said the Tennessee-native of his second series win and first on an oval. “This was over all a good day for the entire team. It’s really not the way I wanted to win it. You want to see green flag racing, not the cautions that we saw.”

The final yellow came when Anders Krohn Jorge Goncalvesz and Clauson entered Turn 1 three wide with brief contact resulting between Goncalvez and Clauson. Krohn struck the outside SAFER Barrier with the front of the car .Goncalvez also struck the barrier with the front of his car, shot across the track, and struck the inner retaining wall in the short chute. The car slid on its side coming to rest after shedding many parts. Goncalvez was placed on a stretcher and into a waiting ambulance, but not before giving a thumbs-up signal to the crowd. He was transported to IU Health Methodist for further evaluation. He was awake and alert.

Clauson, the 2010 USAC Midget Series champion, never lead after falling back at the start. “I fell back early there and didn’t really do my job at the beginning. I had a hard time figuring it out for awhile. I didn’t have enough green laps to make up for those mistakes early on, “said Clauson, who also drove an entry for Sam Schmidt Motorsports. ” This is a lot different than anything I’ve ever done. It was a lot wilder than I expected, but it was a lot of fun.” He finished fifth behind Victor Garcia and Stefan Wilson.

Team owner Sam Schmidt has had a storybook week with IndyCar driver Alex Tagliani winning the pole for the 500 and his team finishing 1-2 in the Freedom 100. “I’ve been trying to put this situation into words for the past weeks. I’m still having extreme difficulty We just bought the assets to the Indy Car team in March, and that came with a phenomenal group of people. We’ve always had the Indy Lights expertise, but to have won 3 of 4 lights races to date, to be top five in points in the IndyCar series, to roll in here and have the #77 (Tagliani) get the pole-and then win the (Lights) race today. The 100th anniversary race means so much that it just kind of multiplies everything by two. I feel truly blessed. I’m just the lucky beneficiary. I can’t describe it.”

Firestone Indy Lights
Firestone Freedom 100
INDIANAPOLIS – Results Friday of the Firestone Freedom 100 Firestone Indy Lights event on the 2.5 mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with order of finish, starting position in parentheses, driver, laps complete and reason out (if any):
1. (2) Josef Newgarden, 40, Running
2. (5) Esteban Guerrieri, 40, Running
3. (4) Victor Garcia, 40, Running
4. (3) Stefan Wilson, 40, Running
5. (1) Bryan Clauson, 40, Running
6. (6) Peter Dempsey, 40, Running
7. (16) Rusty Mitchell, 40, Running
8. (9) David Ostella, 40, Running
9. (17) Chase Austin, 40, Running
10. (7) Mikael Grenier, 40, Running
11. (10) Jorge Goncalvez, 34, Contact
12. (8) Anders Krohn, 34, Contact
13. (14) Duarte Ferreira, 29, Contact
14. (18) Brandon Wagner, 28, Contact
15. (12) Gustavo Yacaman, 20, Contact
16. (15) Juan Pablo Garcia, 20, Contact
17. (11) James Winslow, 20, Contact
18. (13) Victor Carbone, 7, Contact

Race Statistics
Winner’s Average Speed: 107.817
Time of Race: 55:38.9881
Margin of victory: Under caution
Cautions: 4 for 22 laps
Lead changes: 6 among 4 drivers
Lap Leaders: Newgarden 1-2, Wilson 3, Newgarden 4, Krohn 5-11, Newgarden 12, Guerrieri 13-14, Newgarden 15-40.
Point Standings: Newgarden 149, Guerrieri 125, V. Garcia 121, Wilson 121, Dempsey 111, Conor Daly 109, Grenier 102, Ostella 95, Krohn 94, Goncalvez 90.

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.”

racingnation.com

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