Dillon Battistini won the sixth Firestone Freedom 100 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway from the pole, leading 38 of 40 laps to record his second-career victory in Firestone Indy Lights.
The race was held Saturday afternoon after it was rained out Friday at the 2.5-mile superspeedway.
Battistini, who drives for Panther Racing, was challenged throughout the race, never leading by more than half of a second.
“It wasn’t easy at all, especially at the start of the race,” Battistini said. “I think it was James who managed to get a few good runs on me. You can get a massive tow from quite a long way back here, and I knew that I could get it back. You can’t see very much out of the back of these cars, but going on what my spotter said, it was very close. It was a good race, and I’m just glad that I came out on top.”
Richard Antinucci, the nephew of 1998 Indianapolis 500 winner Eddie Cheever, Jr., finished second, 0.2458 second behind Battistini.
“We tried to take it easy at the beginning because I think the majority of the field was having problems already with the rubbered-in track yesterday,” Antinucci said. “The tires just weren’t lasting the race distance. Then today the rubber went away with the race last night, so we were even more concerned. We ran really conservative, with a lot of downforce. We were really quick in the corners. I think we were the quickest out there. I just kept hitting the limiter.”
Antinucci’s third second-place finish of the season was good enough to help him regain the point lead from J.R. Hildebrand.
Wade Cunningham finished third, Robbie Pecorari finished fourth and Ana Beatriz was fifth.
The finish:
Showing driver, laps completed and money won: 1. Dillon Battistini, 40, $45,000; 2. Richard Antinucci, 40, $30,000; 3. Wade Cunningham, 40, $24,000; 4. Robbie Pecorari, 40, $19,000; 5. Ana Beatriz, 40, $18,000; 6. Bobby Wilson, 40, $17,000; 7. Logan Gomez, 40, $16,000; 8. Jeff Simmons, 40, $15,000; 9. Andrew Prendeville, 40, $14,000; 10. Raphael Matos, 40, $13,000; 11. Al Unser III, 40, $12,500; 12. Sean Guthrie, 40, $12,000; 13. Mike Potekhen, 40, $13,500; 14. Arie Luyendyk, Jr., 40, $11,000; 15. Marc Williams, 40, $10,500; 16. Brent Sherman, 40, $9,500; 17. James Davison, 40, $8,500; 18. Chris Festa, 40, $10,000; 19. Pablo Donoso, 40, $6,500; 20. Jonny Reid, 40, $7,000; 21. Micky Gilbert, 40, $4,500; 22. Tom Wieringa, 40, $4,000; 23. Jake Slotten, 39, $4,500; 24. J.R. Hildebrand, 39, $3,000; 25. Mark Olson, 38, $3,750; 26. Cyndie Allemann, 22, $2,500; 27. Jon Brownson, 1, $2,250.