Freedom 100 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway

INDIANAPOLIS – It proving that it doesn’t matter how many cars start in the Freedom 100 Indy Lights Series race run at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. When there’s 20 cars like some years, or eight like on Friday, the racing is always one of the most thrilling of the entire season.

Keep this in mind, there were only eight cars in the annual Carb Day race this year, but in just 40 laps, we saw 119 total passes throughout the field. Also, there was an astounding 20 lead changes. That’s exactly half the race we saw a different leader.

Colton Herta made daring passes all day and put his No. 98 Mazda in the right position at the right time as he narrowly beat his Andretti Autosport teammate Patricio O’Ward to the yard of bricks en route to the Month of May sweep.

Herta, won both races on the 2.439-mile road course here two weeks ago. Then, he backed that up with leading 10 of the 40 laps on a sun filled afternoon on the 2.5-mile oval in earning his third straight win and fifth of his Indy Lights Series career. The second generation driver now has eight podium finishes in his last nine starts and takes over the points lead heading into the next race of the 2018 season.

O’Ward brought his No. 27 Mazda home runner-up as he finished just 0.0281-seconds behind his teammate Herta for his fifth podium of his young career. O’Ward only trails Herta by four points in the standings leaving Indy.

Dalton Kellett earned his fourth career podium in his No. 28 Mazda to give Andretti a 1-2-3 effort on Friday. Kellett, started on the pole and led a race-high 17 laps en route to his second podium in the Freedom 100.

Santi Urrutia was fourth in his No. 5 Mazda for his second straight fourth place finish on the season. He now trails Herta by 16 points. His fourth place run on Friday was his 30th career top five finish in the series.

Ryan Norman rounded out the top five in his No. 48 Mazda to give Andretti four of the top five finishers.

The top four finishers on Friday were separated by just 0.3303-seconds.

The race went caution free and had constant three wide action throughout.

Freedom 100 Results