Leist conquers Road America for second straight Lights win

Matheus Leist is on a roll just now in Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires, the final rung on the Mazda Road to Indy open-wheel development ladder. Coming off his maiden victory in the Freedom 100 last month at Indianapolis, the Brazilian rookie qualified on pole for this afternoon's Mazda Indy Lights Grand Prix of Road America Presented by Allied Building Products, then led from flag to flag to win handsomely on his first visit to the high-speed 4.014-mile Road America circuit in Elkhart Lake, Wis.

Fellow South American Santi Urrutia, from Uruguay (who won one of the two races last year at Road America) finished a distant second for Belardi Auto Racing after climbing up from 10th place, finishing inches ahead of championship leader Juncos racing's Kyle Kaiser.

The closest anyone got to challenging Leist for the race win was at Turn 1, when a flying start – plus the benefit of a big draft on the long, mainly uphill front straightaway – enabled Ryan Norman, who started a career-best third for Andretti Autosport, to tow past front row qualifier Neil Alberico and, momentarily, challenge Leist for the top spot. Leist managed to fend off the attack but Alberico wasn't quite so fortunate. The front wing of Alberico's Carlin Dallara-Mazda IL-15 made minor contact with the rear of Norman's car, causing him to plummet to ninth by the completion of the opening lap.

While Leist took off into the lead and Norman slotted into second, Kaiser, who started fourth, was glued to Norman's rear wing as the leaders sped past the pits for the first time. Right behind them, remarkably, was Urrutia, despite starting 10th after encountering some mechanical difficulties in qualifying.

Kaiser took advantage of the draft to draw alongside Norman on the downhill run to Turn 5... only for Urrutia to do the same, then leave his braking until absolutely the last moment as he dived inside both of his rivals to claim second place.

The in-fighting played right into the hands of Leist, however, who set a fast, consistent pace at the front and soon began to stretch out an appreciable margin over his rivals. The gap grew to almost three seconds after five laps as he eased away to a well controlled victory. Leist's eventual winning margin was 6.1667 seconds.

Kaiser and Norman continued to battle over third place, exchanging positions a couple of times before a mistake on Lap 6 saw Norman run wide onto the grass in Turn Three. The excursion cost him three positions and allowed Kaiser back up into third. The Californian then closed rapidly on Urrutia, setting the fastest lap of the race on Lap 8 at a new record 1:54.4115 (126.302 mph). It wasn't long before the two cars were together again, but Urrutia defended staunchly and even though Kaiser carried a lot of speed out of the final corner on the final lap and drafted up underneath Urrutia's rear wing as they sped up the hill, the Uruguayan remained narrowly ahead at the finish to claim his second runner-up finish from the last three races. Urrutia also claimed the Tilton Hard Charger Award.

"Finishing second I think is not good," he said. "We want to win, coming from 10th for sure is good. We need to improve a little bit, we're struggling a lot and other cars are way quicker than me, I mean Leist had a good pace, guys behind me were quicker than me. We finished second, good points, but if we don't improve by tomorrow it's going to be the same thing, so we gotta keep working."

"I take some risk (on the three-wide pass), for sure, it worked. But when you start from 10th and you're back in the championship, this is what you have to do, especially when you're not quick."

"If you want to win the championship, we need to win races, and we don't have the speed to win races right now."

Norman capped an impressive drive by fighting back from his earlier error and overtaking both Dalton Kellett, who later slipped back down the order, and the Canadian's Andretti Autosport teammate Nico Jamin to claim a season-best fourth. Norman also earned the Staubli Award.

Colombian Juan Piedrahita, in his 50th Indy Lights start, also drove well for Team Pelfrey, turning some extremely fast laps as he chased Norman to the finish line. Jamin followed in sixth ahead of Alberico. Notably every one of the 14 starters turned a lap within 0.75 seconds of Kaiser's new benchmark fastest lap.

A separate qualifying session earlier this morning to set the grid for tomorrow's ninth Indy Lights race of the season saw Colton Herta earn the pole position for Andretti-Steinbrenner Racing with a new record lap of 1m52.0034s (129.018 mph). Leist will start second. The race will go green at 9:45 a.m. ET and will be broadcast on NBCSN at 11:30 am EDT. Live timing and live streaming also will be available on the RoadToIndy.TV App, RoadToIndy.TV, indylights.com and indycar.com.