- Small but demanding: Indy Lights heads to Iowa Speedway
- Lundqvist braced for intense racing on shortest lap of the year
Championship leader Linus Lundqvist is committed to racing around in circles in the next confrontation over this year’s Indy Lights title, as the INDYCAR feeder series sets camp at Iowa Speedway this weekend for the first oval event of the season.
Heavily connected with U.S. motorsports, oval racing is an integral part of the American sporting culture. Considered by many as its own art form, ovals place vastly different demands on driver and machine to those of more traditional road courses or street tracks, where Lundqvist has shone so far this season to establish an 87-point championship lead.
As a matter of fact, this weekend marks only Lundqvist’s second-ever oval competition, despite the Swede now well into his third campaign in the U.S. single-seater landscape.
The 23-year-old made his oval debut last year at Gateway (which also features later on this season’s schedule). Back then, an inspired Lundqvist ran in podium – and possibly victory – contention, before a high-speed, 300 km/h tyre failure caused him to spectacularly crash out.
Despite the violent memories, however, the HMD Motorsports driver is only fuelled with positives heading into the weekend at Iowa Speedway.
“I’m excited to head to Iowa and getting to race at an oval again,” says Linus Lundqvist. “It’s something I’m really looking forward to. I got up to speed quickly last year at Gateway and I truly enjoyed the racing.
“Iowa is a different kind of track, extremely short and intense with lap times of around 20 seconds. You really have to be awake and on it all the time – there is no rest whatsoever – but it’s definitely a challenge I’m enthusiastic about.”
The Indy Lights pack conducted a day of testing at Iowa Speedway just under a month ago, with Lundqvist racking up 216 laps around the 0.875-mile track – almost three times the distance of this weekend’s race (75 laps).
“We all tested different things so it’s hard to draw any firm conclusions, but speaking for myself I thought it was a positive day,” Linus Lundqvist concludes. “It seems possible to run two-wide and I think we’ll see an entertaining race. I’ve won at road courses and street tracks, but never on an oval, so that’s definitely something I want to tick off the box. It is one of my main targets in the short term.”
The weekend at Iowa Speedway follows a slightly different structure to previous Indy Lights events, with practice on Friday and both qualifying and the race then taking place on Saturday.
TIME TABLE
All times local (U.S. Central)
Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires
Rd. 9 | Iowa Speedway
Friday 22 July
Practice: 2:15-3:05 pm
Saturday 23 July
Qualifying: 8:30-9:00 am
Race: 11:15 am
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires
Top 5 | After 8/14 races
1: Linus Lundqvist (SWE), 350 p.
2: Sting Ray Robb (USA), 263 p.
3: Matthew Brabham (AUS), 254 p.
4: Hunter McElrea (NZL), 252 p.
5: Benjamin Pedersen (DEN), 246 p.
View full standings
ENTRY LIST
View entry list here
STREAMING & TIMING
racecontrol.indycar.com
INDYCAR Live!
UPDATES & RESULTS
www.linuslundqvistracing.se
LL Facebook | LL Instagram
FURTHER INFORMATION
Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires
HMD Motorsports with Dale Coyne Racing
