Serralles Scores First Indy Lights Victory

Felix Serralles celebrates in victory lane at the Milwaukee Mile after capturing his first Cooper Tires Indy Lights win. [Russ Lake Photo]

Starting in sixth spot, series rookie Felix Serralles scored his first Cooper Tires Indy Lights win Sunday in the Grand Prix of Milwaukee.

Serralles passed race leader RC Enerson on lap 88 as the two worked their way through lapped traffic. Serralles, who competed in the European F3 series in 2014, never relinquished the lead once he took over the top spot, winning by 5.561 sec.

The win at the Milwaukee Mile, the home track of Belardi Racing, made it all the more special for car owner Brian Belardi who lives in near-by Grafton, Wis.

“Everyone is excited to get our first win,” said the 23-year-old Serralles who was on an oval track for just the second time. “I’m excited just to win a race this year and to be on an oval is unheard of for me. I just drove the hell out of it”
Enerson, who started in the front row, passed pole-winner Spencer Pigot on lap one and held off Serralles until lap 88 when the eventual winner chased him down at the start/finish line.

Pigot, who has won four races this season, experienced gearbox problems late in the race and fell to seventh at the finish.
Juan Piedrahita, in another Belardi entry, was third while Jack Harvey maintained his points lead over Pigot, despite finishing fourth.

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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