By Patrick Stephan
Welcome to the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, where I will be anchoring TSOLadder’s coverage of the USF Pro Championships action this weekend.
Today’s USF Pro activity includes both the USF 2000 and USF Pro 2000 Series presented by Cooper Tires.
The schedule is below – including the INDYCAR action for the NTT INDYCAR Series and INDY NXT, but here at TSOLadder, we’ll focus on USF action. And really, the USF action will dominate the day with the two series having practice, qualifying and the first USF2000 race all taking place today.
The first concern will of course be the weather, where our twitter friend @indycar_wxman says we might see some moisture later this afternoon.
Additionally, like much of the country, it’s pretty smoky, hazy here at Mid-Ohio. Kind of hard to tell if it’s gonna rain…or we’ll all just choke on the wildfire smoke. Being from Colorado, this isn’t unusual for us, with the notable exception that a smoke/humidity combination makes the skies here quite soupy.
One thing I always notice at these weekends is how early the USF Pro Championships crews have to arrive each day. I had a red-eye that turned in to an overnight. Landed at 4am, got my car at 5am, got to the track at 6:30 – and I feel like I was late. Super appreciative of the work these crews do to get the cars on track every day.
Friday June 30 Mid-Ohio Schedule:
| Time | Series | Session |
|---|---|---|
| 8:00 AM – 8:30 AM | USF Pro 2000 | Practice |
| 8:45 AM – 9:15 AM | USF2000 | Practice |
| 9:30 AM – 10:10 AM | Porsche Sprint Challenge | Practice |
| 10:25 AM – 10:55 AM | USF Pro 2000 | Qualifying 1 |
| 11:10 AM – 11:40 AM | USF2000 | Qualifying |
| 12:10 PM – 12:50 PM | Porsche Sprint Challenge | Practice 2 |
| 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM | NTT INDYCAR SERIES | 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM |
| 1:05 PM – 1:35 PM | USF Pro 2000 | Qualifying 2 |
| 1:55 PM – 2:40 PM | INDY NXT | Practice 1 |
| 3:05 PM – 4:20 PM | NTT INDYCAR SERIES | Practice 1 |
| 4:40 PM – 5:20 PM | USF2000 | Race 1 |