Jack Aitken may have already signed up for Formula Renault 2.0 with Koiranen GP, but that hasn’t stopped the young Briton from hopping across the pond for some preseason Cooper Tires WinterFest action with Team Pelfrey in the Pro Mazda Championship Presented by Cooper Tires. Aitken, 18, impressed in his debut with Team Pelfrey last year and was even more impressive at NOLA Motorsports Park. Aitken, though, had to deal with a tough challenger in Andretti Autosport’s newest driver, Malaysian Weiron Tan. Aitken left NOLA with two victories and the WinterFest points lead, but Tan has shown he has the pace to contend throughout the full 2015 campaign.
Race 1
Tan took top honors in practice, but Aitken stole the show in qualifying and claimed the pole position for Race 1. Aitken put the advantage of pole to work in Race 1, holding the lead from start to finish. Tan, though, was not about to go quietly into the night. Tan harried and harassed Aitken the entire way, pulling up alongside the Team Pelfrey driver on numerous occasions without being able to complete a pass for the lead. They finished just 0.3387 seconds apart at the line and Tan was none too pleased with Aitken’s aggressive defending, but he would get his chance for revenge in Race 2. Some nine seconds adrift of the frontrunners was Juncos Racing’s Will Owen, while JDC MotorSports’ Raoul Owens and Juncos’ Garett Grist completed the top five.
Race 2 got off to an unfortunate bang for several of the drivers in the field. Aitken and Tan again started on the front row, but the chaos was behind them at the drop of the green flag. Tan got the jump on Aitken at the start and took the lead while Aitken dropped back through the field. Meanwhile, Grist got turned around and hit the pit wall, with Cape Motorsports with Wayne Taylor Racing’s Daniel Burkett and M1 Racing’s Carlos Conde also caught in the melee. When the racing resumed, Tan stretched out to a seven second advantage by the finish. Nicholas Latifi, the young Canadian who will compete with Arden Motorsport in the World Series by Renault in 2015, stormed from seventh at the start to a runner-up finish for M1 Racing. Will Owen reprised his third place finish from Race 1, while Aitken recovered to claim fourth ahead of Cape’s Florian Latorre.
Tan earned the pole position for Race 3,with Aitken again returning to start from the front row. Aitken would use the outside line to great success in Turn 1, hanging tough to claim the lead from Tan with little space to spare. Much like in Race 1, Aitken would just barely fend off the advances of Tan, claiming his second WinterFest victory by just 0.6788 seconds. Behind the perennial frontrunners, Grist thought he had third place sewn up as a reward to his hard-working Juncos Racing crew who quickly rebuilt his car after the Race 2 start-line accident. However, Latifi put in another storming drive—this time from tenth on the grid—to claim a second podium finish just minutes before the end of the race. Grist would settle for fourth, while Juncos teammate Jose Gutierrez hounded Latorre for fifth before pushing Latorre wide with just a few laps remaining. Latorre would fall back to eighth, while Owen would claim sixth ahead of Andretti’s Dalton Kellett in seventh.
The Pro Mazda field returns to action—winter weather permitting—Wednesday and Thursday at Barber Motorsports Park.
Cooper Tires WinterFest Pro Mazda Standings After NOLA
1. Jack Aitken (83)
2. Weiron Tan (-5)
3. Will Owen (-24)
4. Nicholas Latifi (-29)
5. Florian Latorre (-39)
6. Raoul Owens (-40)
7. Timothe Buret (-45)
8. Garett Grist (-46)
9. Jose Gutierrez (-47)
10. Michael Johnson (-49)
11. Dalton Kellett (-53)
12. Alessandro Latif (-53)
13. Bobby Eberle (-55)
14. Carlos Conde (-59)
15. Daniel Burkett (-69)
