Indy Lights: Lundqvist tops opening session at Road America

Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires championship leader Linus Lundqvist and his HMD Motorsports teammates continued their recent dominance Friday, leading the day’s only practice for Sunday’s Indy Lights Grand Prix at Road America.

Lundqvist’s best lap of 1 minute, 55.0306 seconds in the No. 26 HMD Motorsports with Dale Coyne Racing machine led a trio of HMD drivers atop the charts.

“It was a good day,” the 23-year-old Swede said. “It’s always awesome to come back to Road America. It’s an awesome place. A great track and it’s always exciting to go around here. We’ll see how the weekend goes. The weather might play a joker in all of this. We’ll keep an eye on that. The car seems to be in a good place. I seem to be in a good place. The team is happy. We’ll keep on pushing, so happy day!”

Danial Frost posted the second-fastest time at 1:55.2449 in the No. 68 HMD Motorsports with Dale Coyne Racing machine, and Benjamin Pedersen was third at 1:55.3901 in the No. 24 Global Racing Group with HMD entry.

Lundqvist, who has won four of the past five series races, leads the series standings by 84 points over Pedersen. Frost is tied with Andretti Autosport’s Sting Ray Robb for third place, 92 points back of Lundqvist.

A pair of rookies from Michael Andretti’s organization rounded out the top five with last year’s Indy Pro 2000 champion Christian Rasmussen fourth at 1:55.4179 in the No. 28 Road to Indy Stellrecht entry and Hunter McElrea fifth at 1:55.4345 in the No. 27 Andretti Autosport car.

Driving Force Indy’s No. 99 car, rookie Ernie Francis Jr. completed the most laps in the incident-free session, turning nine circuits around the massive 14-turn, 4.048-mile road course in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

Indy Lights is back in action Saturday at 9:45 a.m. (ET) for the weekend’s second practice, followed by qualifying at 1:10 p.m. (ET). Both sessions will be available on INDYCAR Live! and the INDYCAR Radio Network.

The Indy Lights Grand Prix at Road America is Sunday at 10:35 a.m. (ET), live on Peacock Premium and the INDYCAR Radio Network.

Practice Results