Race

Matthew Brabham led home the Juncos Hollinger Racing cars at the INDY NXT by Firestone Grand Prix of Portland this afternoon. The Australian-American completed the 35-lap race in P9, while team-mate Victor Franzoni claimed P11 after an eventful race.

Both men were in an optimistic mood for the 12th round of the season after showing good pace in Saturday’s qualifying session at Portland International Raceway. As the race went green, Victor left the line from P6 and Matthew was P17 – a legacy of his late spin in qualifying.

As the field hurtled into the Shelton Chicane on the very first lap, Victor got caught in a five-car melee and damaged the front wing on his #75 machine. That meant an unscheduled dash into the pits for the Brazilian as a full course caution was introduced to recover the stranded cars at Turn 1.

Victor dropped down to P11 as a result of his contact, but team-mate Matthew benefited from the trouble at Turn 1. He leapt from P17 to P8 in a single lap.

When racing got back underway, Matthew tried hard to make further progress up the leaderboard but he couldn’t quite find the pace to overhaul the similarly matched cars ahead of him on the 1.9-mile lap. He therefore had to settle for P9.

Victor meanwhile, had to serve a ‘stop and hold’ penalty in the pits for his involvement in the opening lap collision and although he momentarily dropped to P12, he recovered to P11 as the checkered flag fell.

Victor Franzoni said:

“The weekend was going well and I felt comfortable with the car. I think we were very quick and did an amazing job on the set-up from what we had in the past. Every decision we took was great and we improved a lot.

“Unfortunately, the Turn 1 contact was my fault. I took slightly too long to decide whether I would go left or right in the braking zone and when I realised I couldn’t stop the car. I made contact with the back of Reece’s (Gold) car. I’m sorry to all the drivers, teams and Juncos Hollinger for what happened. It was an honest mistake that can sometimes happen in motorsport.

“Now we focus on Laguna Seca where we have two races. I think we can have a good weekend there if we carry over the good work that we did here at Portland.”

Matthew Brabham said:

“It was a tough weekend for me, but the team and I worked hard to recover and get faster as we progressed through the sessions. We started from the back of the grid in the race and still managed to finish inside the top 10 which was pleasing.

“I think we have good potential and can definitely be really fast and running up at the front, we just have to put it all together. Not a bad ending to the weekend but plenty of work to do heading into Laguna.

“Big thank you to the team for all the hard work and the opportunity to drive. We will go hard and push for the last two races.”