ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Raphael Matos extended his St. Petersburg winning streak to three-straight victories by winning on Saturday before Richard Antinucci snapped the streak the next day when he scored his third career victory in Firestone Indy Lights victory in Sunday’s finale in a doubleheader at the St. Petersburg Grand Prix.
Matos’s Saturday win was impressive as he led every lap around the tight 1.8-mile street course. It was his third Indy Lights triumph in six starts with all three victories coming in St. Pete. He swept last year’s doubleheader. It was the second-straight win for AFS/Andretti Green Racing.
“I love St. Petersburg,” Matos said. “The atmosphere is great and everything was just working great today with the AFS Racing/Andretti Green Racing car. I just can’t thank all of those guys enough. Michael Andretti, Kim Green, Kevin Savoree and Gary Peterson have put a lot into the program.
“This is our first victory of the year, and hopefully we can repeat tomorrow.”
Antinucci finished second on Saturday and had a fierce battle with teammate Ana Beatriz, who had an impressive third-place finish.
“It was a good but tough race,” Antinucci said. “I made a mistake on one of the restarts at the beginning and my teammate Ana (Beatriz) got by me. She did a good job passing me. I tried to make it hard for her, but she was just very good. After that, I had to wait to pass her back. We had that (local) yellow flag that kind of slowed things up.
“Once we got around that, I knew I could pass her if everything was right. Once I got through, I pulled away from her and tried to catch Rafa (Matos). I think he had a couple of tenths on me; he’s had them all weekend.”
Beatriz was a crowd favorite throughout the weekend and showed tremendous promise racing for Sam Schmidt Motorsports one week after finishing seventh at the Homestead-Miami oval.
The top-four finishers from the first race were inverted for the start of Sunday’s race after Matos picked a chip with that number on it from a bag after the race. That meant Jeff Simmons started from the pole for Sunday.
Matos was unable to extend his St. Pete win streak to four in a row on Sunday morning after he was involved in a crash with Simmons. That allowed Antinucci to battle it out with J.R. Hildebrand for the victory. Antinucci added this win to his previous victories at Mid-Ohio and the second Infineon race last year.
But the winner was involved in an incident with Beatriz, which put her out of the race.
 “Rafa (Matos) was really quick this weekend — he and the AGR guys did a great job all weekend, but we were right behind them,” Antinucci said. “We made a few changes to the car last night and I think that helped. We slowly took our stride today.
“Things got a little bit hairy with my teammate (Ana Beatriz), which is the worst of all situations. We were fighting out there and I didn’t want to make a dangerous move, but I just ran out of room. It was a racing incident, and I’m not going to start blaming Bea. She’s a great driver and what she was doing was incredible. I’m going to apologize and hopefully we have reasonable, mutual understanding that it was a racing incident.”
The finishes:
Saturday
Showing driver, laps completed and money won: 1. Raphael Matos, 40, $22,000; 2. Richard Antinucci, 40, $17,000; 3. Ana Beatriz, 40, $13,500; 4. Jeff Simmons, 40, $11,000; 5. J.R. Hildebrand, 40, $10,500; 6. Arie Luyendyk, Jr., 40, $10,000; 7. Andrew Prendeville, 40, $9,750; 8. Cyndie Allemann, 40, $9,500; 9. Juan Manuel Polar, 40, $9,000; 10. Robbie Pecorari, 40, $8,750; 11. Chris Festa, 40, $8,500; 12. Al Unser III, 40, $8,000; 13. James Davison, 40, $7,750; 14. Pablo Donoso, 40, $7,500; 15. Sean Guthrie, 40, $7,000; 16. Micky Gilbert, 40, $6,500; 17. Brent Sherman, 39, $6,000; 18. Marc Williams, 39, $5,000; 19. Mitch Cunningham, 38, $4,000; 20. Nathan Freke, 33, $3,000; 21. Dillon Battistini, 30, $2,000; 22. Bobby Wilson, 23, $1,250; 23. Logan Gomez, 9, $1,000.
Sunday
Showing driver, laps completed and money won: 1. Richard Antinucci, 40, $22,000; 2. J.R. Hildebrand, 40, $17,000; 3. Logan Gomez, 40, $13,500; 4. Dillon Battistini, 40, $11,000; 5. Sean Guthrie, 40, $10,500; 6. Al Unser III, 40, $10,000; 7. Juan Manuel Polar, 40, $9,750; 8. Nathan Freke, 40, $9,500; 9. Marc Williams, 40, $9,000; 10. Cyndie Allemann, 40, $8,750; 11. Micky Gilbert, 40, $8,500; 12. Raphael Matos, 39, $8,000; 13. Brent Sherman, 39, $7,750; 14. James Davison, 38, $7,500; 15. Chris Festa, 37, $7,000; 16. Ana Beatriz, 32, $6,500; 17. Pablo Donoso, 32, $7,000; 18. Mitch Cunningham, 26, $5,000; 19. Jeff Simmons, 25, $4,000; 20. Andrew Prendeville, 22, $4,000; 21. Bobby Wilson, 21, $2,000; 22. Arie Luyendyk, Jr., 0, $2,250; 23. Robbie Pecorari, 0, $1,000.