Leist leads wire to wire for Freedom 100 win

Matheus Leist led every lap en route to a commanding win in the Indy Lights Freedom 100 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Friday.

"It was a great race, I'm very happy," said Leist. "The car was amazing."

Leist enjoyed a buffer of a couple of car lengths for most of the race, save for a brief attack from Aaron Telitz six laps from the end. He saw that off, and took advantage of the squabbling over the minor places between the drivers immediately behind him to cross the line 0.7s clear of his nearest rivals.

"Rivals" being the operative word, in this case: With Leist out of reach, the real interest over the final couple of laps was in the battle for second between Telitz and Dalton Kellett.

Kellett was ahead as they exited the final corner but Telitz, tucked right under his rear wing, pulled out of the slipstream and nosed ahead as the pair drag-raced toward the yard of bricks.

"Definitely an exciting finish," said Telitz. "I wasn't saving anything for last – I was definitely trying to get past Matheus for the lead for a while there, but I just couldn't make it stick. We had a great car in traffic, just not the car to win, unfortunately.

Kellett might have been disappointed with third, but he was fortunate to even still be running after getting caught up in a friendly fire incident with Andretti teammate Colton Herta on the opening lap.

The pair appeared to make light contact on the run to Turn 2, which sent Herta spinning up toward the outside wall. Several cars managed to find a way around him; fellow Andretti driver Ryan Norman was less fortunate and found himself pancaked between Herta and the wall. Both were eliminated on the spot, and taken to the medical center for checks.

"I'm fine," said Herta. "I saw him [Kellett] but I don't really know what happened. I'll have to look at the data and the video.

Norman, meanwhile, was left ruing a missed opportunity to capitalize on his qualifying position of fourth.

"I'm physically fine," he said. "Just disappointed. It was our highest starting position of the year so that sucks. Just wrong place, wrong time."

Also contemplating what might have been were Neil Alberico and Santi Urrutia, who were squaring up to be in the hunt at the end until Urrutia glanced the wall with a couple of laps remaining, forcing Alberico to check up and lose contact with the leaders.