Road To Indy in Toronto – Friday – Darren Keane and Cape Motorsports strong in USF2000 practice marred by red flags

The Cape Motorsports duo of Darren Keane and Braden Eves led a disjointed opening USF2000 practice session that was marred by multiple red flags.

They were joined in the top five by teammate Reece Gold (fifth) and Legacy Autosport’s Zach Holden (third) and Cameron Shields (fourth) from Newman Wachs Racing.

The 17 Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship drivers and cars kicked off the 2019 Honda Indy Toronto; serving as an 8 am alarm for the residents of nearby Liberty Village.

The ambient temperature was 71F, and the track temperature was 79F.

The green flag came out right on time but wasn’t shown for long before the starter had to reach for the red flag before any flying laps were turned.

Rookies Yuven Sundaramoorthy (Pabst Racing) and Jak Crawford (DEForce Racing) both made contact in Turn 11, the final turn on the 1.786-mile, 11-turn Exhibition Place street circuit.

Sundaramoorthy’s Pabst Racing No. 21 made significant contact after running out of room in the tight concrete confines of the final series of corners. Crawford was unfortunately collected in the incident.

It took just over 13 minutes for the AMR INDYCAR Safety Team to get the mess cleaned up. The session was extended by five minutes, and the green flag came back out with 18 minutes remaining.

The green flag was only out for five minutes before the red came back out again for contact between Pabst Racing teammates Hunter McElrea and Colin Kaminsky in Turn 8.

At the time, Keane had the quickest lap at 76.481 seconds. He was followed by Sulaiman, Tomaselli, Eves, Kaminsky, McElrea, Rasmussen, Round Garrido, Shields, and Barrichello in the top ten.

The green flag came back out with just over five minutes remaining, but only for two minutes.

The third red flag of the session came out when Manuel Sulaiman and his No. 12 from the DEForce Racing stable had an incident in Turn 6.

The green flag came back out with under a minute remaining, allowing the drivers to complete one more lap.

The 17 drivers were only able to complete 121 laps of the 1.786-mile, 11-turn Exhibition Place street circuit.

USF2000 Practice #1 Results