At Kentucky Speedway Saturday night, after the IndyCar race, Super Aguri Panther Racing’s rookie Hideki Mutoh showed that the Indy Pro Series is making good progress developing drivers who can win on BOTH ovals and road courses. Mutoh-san, having won the pole and first race at the IMS Liberty Challenge double header in June, won the Kentucky 100 pole and race with as much professional class as you could imagine.
Hideki became the fourth IPS driver to join the, should we say, “IPS Complete Driver Club.” The other members are Jeff Simmons [2005], Wade Cunningham [2006] and Alex Lloyd {2007] who have won both oval and road course races. None of these three won their first oval and road race the same year though.
To gain his membership Mutoh, unlike the first three, had to pass a test, a very challenging test, given to him by not one but two of the other “Club” members. Hideki was ready for all challenges and tests when he arrived at the track. In qualifying, he kept the pole from Lloyd, who had to accept second, and Cunningham, who qualified third, by setting a new track record at 191.276 mph.
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Alex Lloyd started on the pole again for the fourth time. This time on the 2.258 mile Mid-Ohio road course. For the first 10 or so laps it looked like this would be his race. However, Richard Antinucci, driving for his uncle’s Cheever Racing in a number 51 car, had an agenda of his own. Having qualified 4th he worked his way up to 2nd and on lap 16 of the 40 made his move on Lloyd and then dominated the rest of the race.
Antinucci, whose hometown is Rome, Italy, where his uncle Eddie grew up, showed what he had learned from European Formula 3 racing and claimed his first Pro Series win. He drove a flawless race and just kept getting faster as the laps progressed. He turned in the quickest lap of the race on the next to last lap, 110.898 mph.
Lloyd, who also sat on the pole at Nashville last weekend but ended up finishing 11th there while Robbie Pecorari won that race, finished a far away 22nd at Mid-Ohio when his gearbox blew up on lap 24.
Wade Cunningham, who had qualified 6th for Mid-Ohio, methodically worked his way up to 2nd for his 5th podium finish this season. He just didn’t have the speed, though, to do anything but watch Antinucci from behind. Cunningham, the 2005 Pro Series champion, finished 4th at Nashville, behind Pecorari, Logan Gomez and Jaime Camara on the concrete oval.
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Sam who? Tony who? Forget about the brawl. True that added a touch of unusual drama after three winners had already been declared at the greatest American road race circuit. But the really important names were Wade, Alex and Scott.
We’ll start with the Brit, because his win was sandwiched in between the two Kiwis. Alex Lloyd was at his best in the second of the Corning Twin 100s at Watkins Glen International for the Indy Pro Series, which was run on Sunday before the Indy car race.
In the first of two Pro races, Alex qualified second fastest and maintained his being able to say he qualified on the front row of every race [that had a real qualification] this season. He finished third in that race, the first time he had not finished either first or second this year.
Alex started in 4th place on the grid for the second race because of the inverted order based on first race finish, which was on Saturday. He took over the lead on the fourth lap and never relinquished that spot. He turned in the fasted lap also. The win gave him a very comfortable lead in the championship points. His 477 points puts him 138 points ahead of Hideki Mutoh, who is still in second.
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