Indy NXT Indianapolis: Nannini holds off Foster for victory

The initial start was waved off as Nannini was admonished for bringing the field to the green too slowly, rather than at pace car speed. Then the next NXT start was called off because he went too early.

Once all was in order, Nannini nailed the start and Louis Foster moved his Andretti Autosport machine into second as his teammate and front-row starter Hunter McElrea dropped to fifth, behind the HMD Motorsports cars of Christian Rasmussen and Kyffin Simpson moved up to third and fourth. Josh Green (HMD) and James Roe (Andretti) ran sixth and seventh, while the second Juncos Hollinger car of Rasmus Lindh had moved up from 10^th to eighth.

Simpson passed Rasmussen around the outside into Turn 7 on Lap 7 to take third place. He then tried to close the three-second gap Foster, who was 1.5s behind Nannini.

But in fact it was Foster who eased away from Simpson while closing on the leader. By Lap 15 he had the gap down to seven-tenths of a second, but Nannini had enough pace to ease away once more. Still, by Lap 20 Foster was a healthy five seconds ahead of Simpson, who had an identical margin over a mighty scrap between Rasmussen and McElrea.

On Lap 25, Foster was back onto Nannini’s tail after the Argentine-Italian locked his tires under braking for Turn 1, but the JHR driver kept his head and kept the lead.

On Lap 31, McElrea finally managed to stay alongside Ramsussen – from Turn 12 through to Turn 2! – to complete a pass and then eased away from the HMD driver.

Foster piled on the pressure in the final five laps, and again Nannini was locking front tires here and there. In fact on Lap 33 he had to hug the inside line into Turn 7 to fend off his pursuer, and the same on the 36^th and final lap.

But Nannini did just enough, through pace and car placement, to take the checkered flag 0.39s ahead of Foster.

Their epic battle pulled them 10sec clear of Simpson with McElrea and Rasmussen completing the top five.

P	Name	Laps	LapTime	FL	FTime	Diff	Led	ST	Team
1	Matteo Nannini	35	1:18.5037	7	1:16.9591	LAP 35	35	1	Juncos Hollinger Racing
2	Louis Foster	35	1:18.4479	9	1:16.9778	0.3909		3	Andretti Autosport
3	Kyffin Simpson	35	1:18.5112	11	1:17.2479	10.1974		4	HMD Motorsports
4	Hunter McElrea	35	1:17.5757	11	1:17.4217	15.4142		2	Andretti Autosport
5	Christian Rasmussen	35	1:18.0775	20	1:17.5120	18.7555		6	HMD Motorsports
6	Josh Green	35	1:18.4259	12	1:17.5201	19.6161		5	HMD Motorsports
7	James Roe	35	1:18.8092	29	1:17.6518	21.2875		8	Andretti Autosport
8	Rasmus Lindh	35	1:18.4554	8	1:17.7281	24.1775		10	Juncos Hollinger Racing
9	Jacob Abel	35	1:18.8414	20	1:17.8113	26.7275		9	Abel Motorsports
10	Enaam Ahmed	35	1:18.9417	8	1:17.6990	30.3672		11	Cape Motorsports
11	Danial Frost	35	1:18.7060	7	1:17.8115	32.1352		12	HMD Motorsports
12	Colin Kaminsky	35	1:18.7844	12	1:17.8977	33.3460		13	Abel Motorsports
13	Nolan Siegel	35	1:18.7694	10	1:17.7598	34.1163		16	HMD Motorsports
14	Jagger Jones	35	1:18.8446	11	1:17.6908	37.5289		17	Cape Motorsports
15	Jamie Chadwick	35	1:18.6794	15	1:17.9199	38.9149		14	Andretti Autosport
16	Reece Gold	35	1:18.7177	12	1:18.0604	43.8057		15	HMD Motorsports
17	Josh Pierson	35	1:19.0556	15	1:18.0464	46.2890		7	HMD Motorsports
18	Christian Bogle	35	1:19.7579	12	1:18.2849	63.6811		18	HMD Motorsports