Indy NXT Indianapolis: Nannini holds off Foster for victory

The initial start was waved off as Nannini was admonished for bringing the field to the green too slowly, rather than at pace car speed. Then the next NXT start was called off because he went too early.

Once all was in order, Nannini nailed the start and Louis Foster moved his Andretti Autosport machine into second as his teammate and front-row starter Hunter McElrea dropped to fifth, behind the HMD Motorsports cars of Christian Rasmussen and Kyffin Simpson moved up to third and fourth. Josh Green (HMD) and James Roe (Andretti) ran sixth and seventh, while the second Juncos Hollinger car of Rasmus Lindh had moved up from 10^th to eighth.

Simpson passed Rasmussen around the outside into Turn 7 on Lap 7 to take third place. He then tried to close the three-second gap Foster, who was 1.5s behind Nannini.

But in fact it was Foster who eased away from Simpson while closing on the leader. By Lap 15 he had the gap down to seven-tenths of a second, but Nannini had enough pace to ease away once more. Still, by Lap 20 Foster was a healthy five seconds ahead of Simpson, who had an identical margin over a mighty scrap between Rasmussen and McElrea.

On Lap 25, Foster was back onto Nannini’s tail after the Argentine-Italian locked his tires under braking for Turn 1, but the JHR driver kept his head and kept the lead.

On Lap 31, McElrea finally managed to stay alongside Ramsussen – from Turn 12 through to Turn 2! – to complete a pass and then eased away from the HMD driver.

Foster piled on the pressure in the final five laps, and again Nannini was locking front tires here and there. In fact on Lap 33 he had to hug the inside line into Turn 7 to fend off his pursuer, and the same on the 36^th and final lap.

But Nannini did just enough, through pace and car placement, to take the checkered flag 0.39s ahead of Foster.

Their epic battle pulled them 10sec clear of Simpson with McElrea and Rasmussen completing the top five.