IPS: Iowa: Andrew Prendeville race notes

Prendeville Finishes 114 of 115 Laps Saturday in Iowa For Racing Laps for Best Friends

NEWTON, Iowa, June 23 -Andrew Prendeville survived an accident on lap 93 that eliminated two other drivers and went on to complete 114 of 115 laps in the Indy Pro Series' first race ever at Iowa Speedway Saturday with his Best Friends Animal Society No. 5.

Finishing just one lap down in the torrid race, which featured lap times of 20 seconds for the 0.875-mile oval, was an accomplishment. It was only the fourth oval-track race ever for Prendeville, of Morristown, N.J., who raises money for Best Friends through a program called Racing Laps for Best Friends and a Web site at racinglapsforbestfriends.com.

Prendeville started 14th and finished 14th. In between he was as high as 11th and as low as 20th in the 22-car field. He finished one lap down but he did indeed finish. On lap 93 finishing looked doubtful, as Prendeville spun to avoid a crash that eliminated the cars of Jonathan Klein and Stephen Simpson. Somehow Prendeville's car wasn't damaged, and in fact he continued to post lap times that were comparable to the leaders'. His fastest lap was actually his last one, when he was timed in 20.1179 seconds for an average speed of 159.977 miles per hour.

"I had a good run on Ken Losch and another driver ahead of me," Prendeville said afterwards about his close call. "I heard my spotter say 'Yellow! Yellow!' and I saw Simpson in the wall. Two cars ahead of me checked up real good, and then Jono [Klein] was coming down the track and I was trying to miss him, and I went spinning down the frontstretch basically. I kept it off the wall, and there was no damage to the car at all.

"Before that, on lap two or three, we had a huge snap oversteer, but I got that sorted out and the car was really very good," he continued. "We were running the same lap times as the leaders. It's just extremely hard to pass here, so that made it a bit frustrating.

"We finished the race, which is important," he continued. "The RLR/Andersen Racing team gained a lot in terms of our oval qualifying set-up," he noted.

"The whole month of June has been frustrating, and I'm just really happy that we're heading into July and we're going to get to some tracks that I know," he added.

-credit: restart communications