Carbone Rides Lady Luck to Vegas Victory

With the championship already secured, Josef Newgarden went out with just one mission for the season finale of the Firestone Indy Lights season: win yet again. With one lap to go, it looked like Newgarden would be able to take home yet another victory for himself and his Sam Schmidt Motorsports team. Coming out of Turn 2, though, it all went wrong and another Sam Schmidt Motorsports driver snuck past as Newgarden slowed with an apparent cut tire. Polesitter Victor Carbone took a close victory over fellow SSM teammate Esteban Guerrieri, with Jorge Goncalvez completing the podium for the second race in a row.

From the drop of the green, it was apparent that the 67-lap event would be a SSM freight train at the front. With Carbone starting from pole, Guerrieri quickly elevated himself to second from his third place grid position while Newgarden quickly knifed his way through the field. Newgarden, starting from a relatively disappointing eighth place, had the lead from his teammates by Lap 7. On Lap 8, the field was slowed when Duarte Ferreira’s aggressive driving again resulted in a negative outcome.

Ferreira cut across the bow of Rusty Mitchell heading into Turn 1, cutting his left rear tire and Mitchell’s right front tire. As Ferreira got into Turn 2, he got loose and spun, collecting both Mitchell and the unsuspecting Bryan Clauson. The race would neutralized under the red flag for ten minutes while the Holmatro Safety Team cleaned up the chaos in Turn 2. Mitchell placed the blame for the incident squarely on the shoulders of the young Angolan driver Ferreira, referring to him both as a “moron” and an “idiot” for his continual style of over-aggressive driving.

When the race resumed on Lap 13, the SSM train maintained control of the front of the field for the remainder of the race. Newgarden, Carbone, and Guerrieri stayed in formation, content to wait for the end of the race to duke it out amongst the three teammates. Goncalvez, Gustavo Yacaman, and Stefan Wilson would put on a spirited battle for fourth, fifth, and sixth positions for most of the race. Goncalvez would eventually come out on top in that battle, settling into fourth behind the SSM drivers. Stefan Wilson, trying to hold onto his narrow advantage over Guerrieri for second in the championship, would eventually drop back through the field with three laps to go with an apparent issue, cementing himself into third place in the championship and elevating Guerrieri to second.

With the race settled into a duel between the SSM teammates, Carbone was content to wait until the last lap to make a run on Newgarden for the lead. As Carbone juked to set-up the pass in Turn 1 and 2, he apparently made light contact with the rear tire of Newgarden, causing Newgarden to slow and drop out of the lead and to the end of the lead lap when all was said and done. Guerrieri would push Carbone home, as Carbone took his first career victory by just 0.0229 of a second and Guerrieri sealed a second place finish in both the race and the championship. Carbone’s victory also gave four SSM drivers a victory this year as Carbone, Newgarden, Guerrieri, and Conor Daly all took the checkers over the course of the season.

Behind the podium finishers of Carbone, Guerrieri, and Goncalvez, the remainder of the finishing order looked like this: Jacob Wilson, Yacaman, Brandon Wagner, Anders Krohn, Stefan Wilson, Newgarden, Oliver Webb (-1 Lap), Ferreira, Mitchell, and Clauson.

The Firestone Indy Lights teams and drivers will conclude the 2011 season with the INDYCAR Championships Celebration Banquet at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas on Monday night at 7 p.m. PDT.