In a race marred by six accidents involving ten different cars, Saavedra avoided all the incidents by being in the lead from lap 10 onward.
Saavedra started second, next to oval veteran Wade Cunningham, but took the lead with a perfect restart, and never looked back.
“I cannot be happier than I am right now,” Saavedra said after the race. “AFS/Andretti Green did an incredible job and I have to thank the guys. The key was the restarts. I just had perfect timing behind Wade. It’s important points for the championship, which for us is the most important thing right now. We’re looking forward to the next races.”
The field was full of oval track rookies—13 out of the 24 drivers—but by and large everyone drove a sensible race. The wind caused all the accidents; as 30-mph gusts would pin cars’ front ends to the track through turns Three and Four, causing the rear ends to spin.
Jesse Mason was the first to crash, collecting Richard Felippe. “The car in front of me lost it, I had nowhere to go, Felippe explained. “It’s unfortunate, but that’s motorsports.”
A few laps later, Ali Jackson, driving a brand-new car which replaced one wrecked in Saturday’s practice, spun into the wall. Behind him Rodrigo Barbosa braked sharply; Sergey Mokshantsev hit Barbosa, catapulting into the air and flipping, and then sliding down the track upside down. In a testament to the engineering of the Indy Lights cars, all the drivers were uninjured.
“I was the first car to spin going into the corner,” Jackson said, back in the pits. “I might have caused a chain reaction—I didn’t see what happened behind me.
On lap 29 Gustavo Yacaman spun half way, then halfway back, but miraculously kept the car off the wall. Six laps later Pablo Donoso spun and hit the wall.
On lap 42, Ana Beatrice, who had been running third all day, made a move on Wade Cunningham to take second. She didn’t stay there long though; on lap 49 she almost spun. She managed to save it, but lost two places.
On lap 59, got bitten by the wind Dillon Battistini, spinning into Pippa Mann, taking both cars out. The safety crew worked frantically, but couldn’t get the debris cleared in time, and the race ended under yellow.
Saavedra got the win, followed by Wade Cunningham and oval rookie Mario Romancini.
The overall grip of the track was quite good,” Cunningham said. “We were able to run two-wide quite easily through (Turns) 1 and 2. It was a little bit more difficult in (Turns) 3 and 4 just because of the tailwinds.”
Mario Romancini concurred. “Like Wade said, especially Turns 3 and 4 was really difficult because we had the wind on our back. It was especially hard to handle the car on Turn 3 on the high line because there’s not much grip there.”
I’m pretty happy with the race. Was just my first oval race. Never been to an oval before to race, just testing. I’m glad that we could score important points for the championship.”
The win puts Saavedra third in the points standings, Jonathan Summerton and Junior Strous.
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