Alex’s Indy Lights championship campaign kicked of at Barber Motorsport Park on April 16th to 18th.
Alex and Team Carlin are under no illusions as to the level of difficulty in being competitive in this series as they both face a significant learning curve – Carlin after four years absence from the series and of course everything is totally new for Alex!
Qualifying well and extracting every bit of speed from the car is a work in progress and achieving seventh in qualifying one and eighth in qualifying two was considered a reasonable start to the season albeit on a track where it’s very difficult to pass. A further factor favouring those at the head of the field was the withdrawn access to ‘push to pass’, the tool available to drivers to assist in overtakes when within 1.5″ of the car ahead. Apparently there were some issues with the technology so the organisers withdrew access for all drivers.
Race One was Alex’s first experience since his karting days of a rolling start. He and nearly every other car jumped well at the start so it was a matter of entering a train into the first corner until two drivers made contact and allowed Alex to climb to 5th position which he maintained until the end. A solid first result in Indy Lights!
Starting eighth in Race Two made for a difficult race but a brilliant first lap saw Alex pass four cars. He executed some fantastic passes on the outside of corners. He then set about trying to pass the third place driver which proved very difficult without ‘push to pass’ once all drivers had settled into a rhythm. However he continued to attempt the pass until an electronics fault shut the engine down momentarily which allowed two cars through before the engine fired again. His final position was sixth and Alex’s championship position at the end of round one is also sixth. On to St Pete!
