Garcia surges to first Indy NXT win at Milwaukee

Don’t tell the principal, but Max Garcia may have earned the right to skip school Monday after his stirring first career Indy NXT by Firestone victory Sunday at the Milwaukee Mile.

Series rookie Garcia earned his first win in his 15th career start in the IndyCar development series, driving his No. 12 Abel Motorsports machine under the checkered flag 0.943s ahead of the No. 68 Cusick Morgan Motorsports car of JM Correa, who also earned a career-best finish.

It’s still uncertain whether Garcia, 17, will be in homeroom Monday morning at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami, where he just started his senior year.

“Unbelievable,” Garcia said. “It’s been such a tough year for all of us at Abel. We knew we had a good oval package. We knew we set the car up more for the race, and we knew in practice we could move through cars. It was all about timing it right and then getting through everyone.

“I’m trying to convince my mom to let me not go to school. Surely, this is something to celebrate. A day off would be nice, right?”

Rookie Jack Beeton continued his strong second half of the season by finishing third in the No. 45 HMD Motorsports machine, earning his third podium result in the last five races.

Andretti Global’s Max Taylor finished fourth in the No. 28 Susan G. Komen entry, while Nikita Johnson rounded out the top five in the No. 21 Cape Motorsports Powered by ECR car and took the lead in a sizzling championship fight with two races remaining.

Johnson drove from 15th at the start to earn his eighth top-five finish of the season. He leads Enzo Fittipaldi by three points and third-place Tymek Kucharczyk by 29 entering the season-ending Grand Prix of Monterey doubleheader Sept. 5-6 at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. It’s tied for the fifth-closest race margin between the top two drivers with two races to go in series history.

“I just kept my head down, pushed really hard and found lines that other people didn’t find until about halfway through,” Johnson said. “I think that really helps, just playing around and trying different lines out when everybody was just stuck in one line. It was a really good points day for us.”

Fittipaldi finished seventh in the No. 67 HMD Motorsports car, while Kucharczyk placed 12th in the No. 71 HMD Motorsports machine.

Garcia started ninth but steadily worked his way through the field on the 1.015-mile oval. He passed Beeton for second on lap 35 and pulled to within one second of leader and pole sitter Josh Pierson of Andretti Global, who had led by more than two seconds in the early going of the 90-lap race.

Under pressure from Garcia, Pierson’s quest for his first career victory unraveled on lap 54 when he spun in the No. 29 Starchive Andretti car in Turn 2 while leading and hit the tire barrier inside that corner to end his race. Pierson led every lap to that point.

Garcia inherited the lead and never surrendered it despite four restarts in the last 37 laps after the race went caution-free for the first 53 laps.

Abel Motorsports driver Garcia was threatened only once on one of those restarts. Beeton looked under Garcia in Turn 1 on lap 83 but couldn’t complete the pass. On the next and final restart on lap 86, Garcia left no doubt by getting a good jump and pulling away easily.

Beeton and Correa raced side by side for second on that restart, allowing Garcia even more time and space out front. Correa eventually prevailed in that duel, one of 208 on-track passes, a track record for Indy NXT at Milwaukee.

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