LASTOCHKIN STARS FOR TEAM PELFREY IN USF2000 SEASON FINALE
PALMETTO, Fla. – The Mazda Road to Indy concluded in style last weekend at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, Calif., highlighted by Team Pelfrey’s Uruguayan hot-shoe Santiago “Santi” Urrutia clinching a hard-fought Pro Mazda Championship Presented by Cooper Tires title by virtue of a pair of second-place finishes. Urrutia earned a Mazda Scholarship worth almost $600,000 to assist in his graduation to the top level of the Mazda Road to Indy, Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires, in 2016. Urrutia became the second Team Pelfrey driver to claim the championship, following in the footsteps of Englishman Jack Hawksworth who is now an established contender in the Verizon IndyCar Series.
In the closing two rounds of the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda, Team Pelfrey’s Los Angeles-based Russian Nikita Lastochkin produced his best performances of the season as he qualified sixth, then ran as high as fourth in Race One. He looked set or a top-five finish until a lack of fuel pressure caused him to slip two positions on the final lap. Lastochkin again played a starring role in Race Two with a fifth-place finish.
While the race season has now concluded, Team Pelfrey will remain hard at work, with a series of upcoming test sessions planned in preparation for 2016.
WHAT THE DRIVER SAID:
Nikita Lastochkin (#84 Team Pelfrey/Russkaya Mekhanika Van Diemen-Mazda) – Race One, started sixth, finished seventh; Race Two, started sixth, finished fifth: “It was another roller-coaster weekend for me, which was overall the case for most of the year. With the engine deciding to blow up in testing, we were lucky to have a spare on hand. With a decent qualifying, I had a good first race running as high as fourth only to find myself out of fuel on the last lap. I was lucky enough to have big gap, so coasting through half of the lap I only had two cars drive past me. Second race was uneventful and resulted in a solid fifth place which is a nice note to finish the season that was otherwise quite a challenge from the early testing on, mostly with the amount of mechanical problems on my car.”