The Indy 500 wasn’t the only berserk race last weekend; check out the photo finish of the Freedom 100


The Indy 500 wasn’t the only berserk race last weekend; check out the photo finish of the Freedom 100

The 100th running of the Indy 500 got the big billing for the Memorial Day weekend, but the weekend started off with Carb Day and the mid-day Freedom 100 at the vaunted Brickyard. The 100-mile Indy Lights race has produced some of the closest finishes ever at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in recent years and while the four-wide photo finish from 2013 will be hard to top, Ed Jones and Dean Stoneman may have created a close second with the 2016 Freedom 100 ending. When the checkered flag flew, Stoneman crossed the line 0.0022 second—or about four inches—ahead of Jones for the win.

The crazy action came from a final restart with two laps remaining. Just before the last green-flag restart, Stoneman in the lead backed up the field hard, putting Juan Piedrahita with nowhere to go and having to weave into pitlane to avoid Stoneman. Piedrahita had charged hard from 13th at the start to second and lost out, but that set up season points leader Jones against Stoneman, who had been in a hospital bed with hundreds of cancerous tumors just four years ago. Jones retook the lead into Turn 1 on the restart, but on the final lap, Stoneman slung around Jones on the outside of Turn 3, making it stick just long enough through Turn 4 to hold off a charging Jones on the front straight by the slimmest of margins. Stoneman knew he’d won, too, making the photo finish with fist pumping in the 200 mph air.

Had the starting line been another 50 feet down the track, the results may very well have been different. Nevertheless, Stoneman put together his first oval-track win for Andretti Autosports in Indy Lights and also vaulted himself into second place in the championship behind Jones. We smell a rivalry brewing for the rest of 2016.

You can watch the whole Freedom 100 here on Indy Lights’ official  YouTube channel.

 


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One thought on “The Indy 500 wasn’t the only berserk race last weekend; check out the photo finish of the Freedom 100

  1. Scott Inman

    The Freedom 100 is never a dull race. I have been going to Carb Day for the last 5 years. If you don’t like the Indy Lights race you don’t like racing.

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