Graduates from UK scene add weight to Lights

For the past three years, the Indycar Series’ designated feeder category from its Road To Indy ladder has been in dire straits. In 2018, Indy Lights grid sizes dipped to an average of 7.5 cars per round. In 2019, that improved to 9.1. In 2020, 10 cars had entered the opening round at St Petersburg, only for that event to be cancelled and then for the whole season to be axed amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Things look much brighter for 2021. New Indycar Series owner Roger Penske is right behind Lights, and already 12 drivers have been confirmed, with the entire quartet of Andretti Autosport’s battalion in place even before Christmas.

Furthermore, British team Carlin is back in the fray for 2021. The team ran in Lights from 2015-17, and claimed the title with Ed Jones in 2016, and its securing of Australian Alex Peroni from the ranks of FIA Formula 3 has already been reported in these pages.

Now the team has added a second car for 2019 US F4 race winner Christian Bogle.

They will be up against a clutch of racers familiar to regulars at British race circuits. Toby Sowery was a leading contender in British F3 in 2016 and 2017 and a Mclaren Autosport BRDC Award finalist in 2015-16 before heading Stateside, and he finished up third in his rookie season of Lights in 2019 (right), with one win. He has joined Juncos Racing, the team that took Spencer Pigot and Kyle Kaiser to Lights titles, alongside Indy Pro 2000 champion Sting Ray Robb.

Swede Linus Lundqvist was the 2018 British F3 champion, and dominated the 2020 Formula Regional Americas series to earn a scholarship to Lights. He partners 2019-20 British F3 race winner Benjamin Pedersen at the Danish-american’s family Global Racing Group, which has entered an alliance with the HMD Motorsports squad of Lundqvist’s closest 2020 rival David Malukas, who also steps up.

Canadian Devlin Defrancesco, who won races in 2016 British F4 and was runner-up in Indy Pro 2000 last year, is part of the Andretti line-up. So is Kyle Kirkwood, fourth in the 2016 Walter Hayes Trophy as a Team USA scholar, and since then a serial title winner in US junior single-seaters.