BROWNSBURG— Bobby Santos III finally got his Carb Night Classic redemption at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.
One year removed from a disappointing loss to Kody Swanson in the USAC Silver Crown feature, the Massachusetts native won the USAC Silver Crown and Midget feature races at the .686-mile oval on Friday night.
Santos started on the pole for the 100-lap Silver Crown race and led from the start, but Swanson was not far behind as the 2021 Silver Crown champion bided his time after passing 1999 Silver Crown champion Ryan Newman for second place early on.
After several caution periods for spins and wall contact, Santos was leading late in the race, trying to get his first Silver Crown win since Phoenix in April of 2018. The winningest driver in Silver Crown history was in second place.
Lap after lap Swanson tried to get by Santos, but the six-time Silver Crown champion could not complete the pass as Santos stayed ahead.
“I was doing everything I could,” Santos said after the race. “I mean, honestly, I was desperate to win a race in one of these things. It's been way too long, and honestly, I don't know. I just moved my line around a little bit, Kristy (Santos, wife and spotter) did a good job giving me information and we just raced our butts off. Everything was on my side today.
“We weren't as good tonight as we should have been, but you’ve still got to get better. We won the race, but we weren't the best car.”
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After a late race caution for Justin Grant’s spin at the entrance of pit road with a handful of laps to go, Swanson tried again in the race’s final two laps but it was not to be. Santos held on to win over Swanson and Taylor Ferns, the first woman to score a podium finish in Silver Crown competition.
Swanson has three wins in the Silver Crown portion of the Carb Night Classic and was trying for a fourth. However, Santos would not make it easy for his rival.
“(Santos) raced really hard, and you can tell he didn't want to give up the lead,” Swanson said. “I had a run to his outside, and I felt like I was there. I just kind of felt like I ran out of room there on the top of (Turns) 1 and 2 (and) couldn't quite make it stick. I never really could quite get him again.”
Rain had washed away qualifying for the Silver Crown and Midget features, so Santos’ fastest time in practice earned him pole position for both features. However, the top 10 cars for the 30-lap Midget feature were inverted, putting Santos in 10th place at the start of that race.
While Dakoda Armstrong led from the start, Santos worked his way through the field and was in second place by Lap 9, hounding Armstrong for the lead. Nick Hamilton brought out the caution for his stalled car on the main straight on Lap 11 and that bunched up the field so Santos could make another run.
Santos took advantage of the restart on Lap 12 and took the lead from Armstrong, pulling away enough to have a lead of half of a straightaway. However, Annie Breidinger’s stalled car at the exit of Turn 4 brought the field closer one more time.
At the restart, Jake Trainor was the biggest beneficiary as the Massachusetts native got second place from Armstrong, but Santos pulled away as the laps counted down to win.
“We were fast in practice, got us the pole and did it the fun way,” Santos said. “I got to start in the back and pass cars, I really enjoy that, so thank IRP and everyone for doing this and putting on that kind of invert, to me that’s fun.”
The Road to Indy also made their traditional stop at Lucas Oil Raceway, which had more importance for USAC this year since both the Indy Pro 2000 and USF2000 championships that raced on Friday are now also under USAC sanction.
Louis Foster won his second Indy Pro 2000 race in a row to take the points lead, but there was a lot of patience required. Reece Gold started on pole position alongside his Juncos Hollinger Racing teammate Enaam Ahmed. As the race approached the halfway point, Foster passed Ahmed for second place and then used the soon-to-be lapped car of Colin Kaminsky as a pick to box Gold in.
“We kind of hit traffic and then eventually (Gold) just started oversteering a little bit,.” Foster said. “And then I realized that that was my time to try and do an overtake, and then (Gold) just must have killed his tires completely.”
Foster cleared Gold to take the lead on Lap 47, a lead that the Exclusive Autosport racer would not relinquish for the rest of the 90-lap race. Despite a caution period for Kaminsky brushing the Turn 1 wall, Foster pulled away following the restart, winning over Gold in second and Turn 3 Motorsport’s Josh Green in third.
Foster’s victory is all the more remarkable in that it came in his oval racing debut after a day and a half of testing in April at LOIRP. The 2021 Euroformula Open Championship runner-up comes from a purely road racing background, but started to enjoy himself on ovals.
“Once you really, really get into it and you start pushing, it's very rewarding and being able to maximize the setup with your engineer and the racing was really fun,” Foster said.
The USF2000 race ran without incident as Cape Motorsports’ Michael d’Orlando led all 75 laps from pole position to win over DEForce Racing’s Bijoy Garg and Pabst Racing’s Myles Rowe in third place.
It was d’Orlando’s second win in a row at LOIRP after winning the 2021 Freedom 75, also for Cape Motorsports. However, the New York native did not have it easy all the way as he had to face a significant challenge from Garg in the last few laps of the race.
However, d’Orlando kept his composure to win and take the points lead over Rowe and third generation racer Jagger Jones, son of P.J. Jones and grandson of 1963 Indianapolis 500 winner Parnelli Jones.