Strous maintains points lead despite feeling the heat in Long Beach

Junior Strous' burnt car

Bob HeathcoteAR1.com

What a difference a couple of weeks make.

Junior Strous was on top of the world after sweeping the season-opening doubleheader weekend at St. Petersburg.

At Long Beach, his hot streak came to an end – after his car caught fire on the opening laps of the Firestone Indy Lights Grand Prix of Long Beach.

"The car was good, but on the first lap, I started seeing errors on my dash," Strous said. “Then in Turn 8, the car started to bog down. I looked back and saw flames and parked it immediately. I have to give credit to the marshals, because they did a great job getting to car and helped limit the damage to the car."

Strous entered the race weekend with lead of more than 20 points. He leaves with a three-point advantage over Jonathan Summerton and a seven-point advantage over Long Beach race winner J.R. Hildebrand.

"After experiencing the highs of winning races in St. Pete, this is obviously a major disappointment," team director Paul Diatlovich added.

"We had a bad weekend," Strous said. "We needed some luck this weekend, and it was all bad, but we will back next week for sure, hopefully with more luck."