#55: Reece Gold, Juncos Hollinger Racing, The Ticket Clinic. Photo courtesy Gavin Baker Photography/Road to Indy

By Tony DiZinno

Reece Gold claimed the win in Saturday’s sixth round of the Indy Pro 2000 Championship season, emerging victorious after a great restart and a hectic initial start in the fifth of eight Road to Indy Presented by Cooper Tires races this weekend on the 2.439-mile, 14-turn Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.

The series veteran in the No. 55 Juncos Hollinger Racing Tatuus PM-22 led 21 of the 25 laps en route to his second win of the season and third in his Indy Pro 2000 career, and 56th career Road to Indy start. Fellow Road to Indy veterans Colin Kaminsky (Pabst Racing) and Nolan Siegel (DEForce Racing) completed the podium.

“I got my first win here, so awesome to do it again,” Gold said on the podium. “It’s one of the most amazing places to win at. Colin and Nolan were clean at the restart. But it was good clean racing with them! This is big. Some of the points contenders finished in the back. It’s a big weekend with three races, hopefully we can do it again in a couple hours!”

Friday’s first race of the weekend had some contact between teammates, a chaotic start, and the winner on the road disqualified in post-race tech. Saturday’s second Indy Pro 2000 race start was even crazier, although settled down quickly once the race restarted.

The grid for this race, set by a combination of second fastest qualifying laps and/or fast race laps from race one, was: Miller, Foster, Siegel, Gold, Porto, Sundaramoorthy, Eves, Kaminsky, Ahmed and Browne in the top 10 with Missig, Brichacek, Green, De Alba, Brewer and Finelli rounding out the field.

But within the first lap, all these things happened, and it’s easier to list them as bullet points:

  • Three cars took to the Turn 1 escape route, which appeared to be two Pabst Racing cars and one Turn 3 Motorsport car.
  • Jordan Missig retired with significant damage to the third Pabst entry, which placed the race immediately under full course caution.
  • De facto Exclusive Autosport teammates Jack William Miller (Miller Vinatieri Motorsports, with Exclusive technical alliance) and Louis Foster collided for the second time in as many days, this time at Turn 7, when Foster pitched Miller into a spin. Foster would later be dinged with a drive-through penalty for incident responsibility and avoidable contact.
  • Enaam Ahmed (Juncos Hollinger Racing) entered the pits with no rear wing and Braden Eves (Jay Howard Driver Development) entered with front wing damage. Ahmed retired despite the JHR team attempting repairs to get him back out, while Eves continued.

With all that occurring, the Lap 1 order was Siegel, Kaminsky, Gold, Porto, Foster, De Alba, Sundaramoorthy, Browne, Brichacek, Green, Brewer, Finelli, Miller, Eves, Ahmed and Missig.

Every single position changed from the grid order. So that running order after Lap 1 featured starting positions of: 3rd, 8th, 4th, 5th, 2nd, 14th, 6th, 10th, 12th, 13th, 15th, 1st, 16th, 7th, 9th and 11th.

Fortunately things calmed down after the restart at the end of Lap 4.

The decisive move came after the restart as Gold, now in second, went to the outside of Siegel while Kaminsky tried to get them both on the outside of all three into Turn 1. Coming out of Turn 1, Gold took the lead with Kaminsky into second and Siegel down to third.

Those three ran in the same positions the remainder of the race while action intensified behind them, primarily in the seventh-10th range.

Miller, who’d fallen to 13th at the end of the first lap fracas, spent the rest of the race recovering and successfully made it back to fifth behind Porto at the finish.

Friday’s inherited winner De Alba had another leap forward, running and finishing sixth after starting 14th and making up a significant amount of ground on the start.

Browne and Sundaramoorthy enjoyed a race-long battle for seventh, with Green and Eves occasionally figuring before fading behind those two and Brichacek, who had a solid drive up to seventh.

Foster posted the fastest race lap as the Exclusive Autosport cars showcased their speed, but his penalty for the avoidable contact and the pit stop that followed left him in an unrepresentative 13th place at the flag behind new teammate Brewer in 12th.

The third and final race of the weekend is scheduled for 12:10 p.m. ET and local time on the Road to Indy TV app. After this race, Siegel provisionally leads the points with 136, while Gold is second on 118 and Foster third on 115.

Indy Pro 2000 GP of Indianapolis – Race #2 Unofficial Results

P No Name Team Laps Diff
1 55 Reece Gold Juncos Hollinger Racing 25 LAP 25
2 27 Colin Kaminsky Pabst Racing 25 1.4833
3 8 Nolan Siegel DEForce Racing 25 2.7616
4 1 Kiko Porto DEForce Racing 25 4.2867
5 40 Jack William Miller Miller Vinatieri Motorsports 25 8.0666
6 6 Salvador De Alba Jay Howard Driver Develpment 25 10.2206
7 5 Wyatt Brichacek Jay Howard Driver Development 25 11.3871
8 18 Yuven Sundaramoorthy Pabst Racing 25 12.9038
9 4 Braden Eves Jay Howard Driver Development 25 15.1094
10 2 Jonathan Browne Turn 3 Motorsport 25 15.5567
11 3 Josh Green Turn 3 Motorsport 25 16.0893
12 93 Lindsay Brewer Exclusive Autosport 25 17.6726
13 90 Louis Foster Exclusive Autosport 25 32.8058
14 83 Charles Finelli FatBoy Racing 25 70.8639
15 47 Enaam Ahmed Juncos Hollinger Racing 6 Mechanical
16 19 Jordan Missig Pabst Racing Contact