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Tag: Gustavo Yacaman

  • Gustavo Yacaman Leads First Practice For New Hampshire 100

    In practice at New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the Firestone Indy Lights New Hampshire 100, Gustavo Yacaman topped the charts with a lap of 25.0034 seconds.

    “The car felt good today and the track is a lot of fun and it reminds me of Milwaukee,” he said. “I really hope that qualifying doesn’t look like it did in Milwaukee after I topped both practice sessions, I qualified fourth. I hope that this weekend we have the speed to keep our pace up during qualifying and the race. Hopefully we can get a pole and maybe a win. I wouldn’t mind having a perfect weekend. It isn’t easy to pass at this track. It really depends on when you come up on a car that is slower than you, you lose all of your front grip. This is why I feel that qualifying will be so crucial. Whoever is on the pole, unless their car is really off, they will keep the lead. We can still make our car better and go faster so we will see what happens Saturday when everyone puts their little tricks on.”

    Sam Schmidt Motorsports trio Josef Newgarden (25.0242), Bryan Clauson (25.3175) and Esteban Guerrieri (25.4634) followed while Anders Krohn was fifth.

    “It was OK,” Newgarden said. “Obviously it was our first day here and it’s new for everybody like a couple of places on the calendar this year. I think we had a good day. It was definitely productive for what we needed to get done and tested on the car for qualifying and race day. I think we’re looking good here for Saturday and hopefully  we qualify well here because I think that it’s going to be very difficult to pass here with the track configuration and the areo push you pick up here. It’s almost worse than Milwaukee. Qualifying could be crucial for the race and hopefully we can put it together for that session.”

    “It’s (NHMS) a lot of fun,” Clauson said. “It’s a tricky little one mile with a lot of grip and a lot of speed. With the progressive banking, you can use multiple lanes to help your car in several different ways. The Sam Schmidt Motorsports guys gave me a great Mazda Road to Indy/NOS Energy Drink No. 77. It’s been a good day of practice here, and I feel really good about the car we have going into this weekend’s race. When you’re fast right off the trailer, it gives you a lot of confidence. It allows you to start working on the little details that are probably going to win you the race. These guys unloaded a great race car for me today, and we’ve just been fine-tuning it all day long.”

    “I think it was a good learning process coming back to the ovals,” Guerrieri said. “The track is a bit tricky, so my approach was to gradually be more aggressive. I think it was a good day. We found the pace and worked on the car. We have good information to analyze Friday. Overall it was good and I’m confident.”

  • Team Moore Racing Happy With Pair of Top Fives at Iowa Speedway

    Team Moore Racing Happy With Pair of Top Fives at Iowa Speedway

    While the focus has been on Andretti Autosport and the win in the IZOD IndyCar Series, the Team Moore Racing teammates are also happy about their results at the Sukup 100 at Iowa Speedway last Saturday night in the Firestone Indy Lights division.

    Gustavo Yacaman scored his best career finish of second after starting on the front row.

    “This was the hardest frigging race I’ve ever driven, so close on so many occasions,” Yacaman said. “Between Bryan (Clauson) and I, a fly couldn’t be able to be there. We were running so close.

    The second place finish marks his first Podium finish since Toronto last year where he finished third. The race wasn’t easy, though, for Yacaman after having to survive an early race incident with pole sitter Esteban Guerrieri, which almost sent him into the turn three wall.

    “I was either going to go for the lead or go for the wall,” Yacaman said. “I told everyone on the team I wasn’t going to lift. You know, I didn’t lift. That’s what happened. I’m sure next time he’ll give me a little bit more space, maybe a foot or two instead of just chopping me right off. He knows I’m not afraid of taking both of us out. It’s how it works. You know, you’ve got to earn your respect. That’s what I did.

    “Yeah, it was a lot of risk, but hey, it paid off. I’m pretty sure not even just on ovals but also on road courses he’s going to know I’m there and I’m not going to lift, and we’re not here to make friends, we’re not here to be careful. This is racing, and like they say, rubbing is racing, right?”

    Guerrieri wasn’t as luck as he had to retire with damage several laps later.

    For Yacaman, he says the thanks goes to his crew, and also team owner Mark Moore, who is working as the team’s engineer/strategist also.

    “It was a pretty tight finish, and I really want to thank Mark (Moore),” Yacaman said. “We worked so hard. We’ve had a strong car so many times, but it’s really good to capitalize on that equipment he’s given me. We’ve just had so much bad luck at Indy, Barber. Long Beach was all right, but we want more, we want podiums, we want race wins. I’m working really hard with the team, and here we are, first podium, and I’m going to keep working just as hard to keep them coming.”

    Meanwhile, Victor Garcia finished fourth in the race, despite starting at the back of the pack due to a fuel pump issue. The finish for Garcia also allowed him to move back up to third in the championship standings.

    “We knew we had a car capable of being at the top but (in qualifying) we had a fuel pump problem,” Garcia said. “My team was telling me to relax and go faster and faster each lap. At the end I was catching people and overtaking.”

    “I’m really happy for the team after they worked so late (June 24),” he added. “I have to thank everyone for all the hard work they did. I’m really happy because we are third in the championship now.”

  • Josef Newgarden Scores Third Firestone Indy Lights Win of The Season at Iowa

    Josef Newgarden Scores Third Firestone Indy Lights Win of The Season at Iowa

    For the third time this year, it was Josef Newgarden going to victory lane as he took the victory in the Sukup 100 at Iowa Speedway.

    “We put a really good, strong car together for that race,” Newgarden, drove of the No. 11 Copart/Score Big/Robo-Pong/SSM car, said. “It felt so good I could go anywhere on the track, and that’s just a tribute to the team. I was so disappointed that we didn’t qualify a little bit better. At least we didn’t put ourselves too far back. We just came in with a conservative approach but still aggressive enough to get in the lead early on and just hold it all the way through.  Great job by the Sam Schmidt Motorsports guys and everyone else that supports us.”

    Newgarden was able to take the lead on lap 26 and never looked back as he scored the win, 5.4724 seconds over Gustavo Yacaman. The second place finish marks his best finish in his career.

    “For the (Lap 6) restart, I just didn’t have the pace to keep up with Esteban and Newgarden was attacking me so he was able to get by,” Yacaman said. “I stuck with Newgarden when he overtook Esteban, and he pulled me through. Then it basically was a battle for second with Bryan.

    “We’ve worked so hard and we’ve had a good car so many times, so it’s good to capitalize on the equipment Mark Moore has given me.”

    Meanwhile, it was Bryan Clauson finishing third for his best finish of the three starts that he’s made this year.

    “We didn’t give each other an inch and it was just good, hard racing,” Clauson said of racing with Yacaman.  “We just didn’t have quite a good enough car to slip underneath (Yacaman).  We were a little bit tight.  We just didn’t have enough to finish the corner on the outside.

    “It was a lot of fun. I threw everything I had at him, and I just didn’t have quite enough.  I spent the last 40 laps trying to get a run and doing something.  I tried high, I tried low, I tried diving under.  I tried throwing everything I could at him, but just never got quite the run I needed to beat him off the corner and take the spot.”

    With the victory, Newgarden expands his points lead from 13 to 46 over Esteban Guerrieri. Guerrieri finished in 12th place after having mechanical issues.

    Victor Garcia and Duarte Ferreira rounded out the top 10.

    “The team won this race last year (with Sebastian Saavedra), and I knew in coming here that we would have a good car,” Ferreira said. “The start was a little crazy but I was able to make up the positions that I lost. I want to thank everyone at BHA for the great job and my sponsors for supporting me.”