Mid-Ohio II: Andrew Prendeville race notes

Prendeville Finishes All 20 Laps Sunday at Mid-Ohio for Best Friends Animal Society

LEXINGTON, Ohio, July 20 - Andrew Prendeville finished all the laps possible in Sunday's Firestone Indy Lights race at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, but that was only 20 laps instead of the scheduled 40 due to a severe thunderstorm that delayed the start of the race for one hour and caused it to become a timed event.

All the scheduled laps were completed in Saturday's race and Prendeville finished it too, so fans that made per-lap donations to the not-for-profit Best Friends Animal Society through racinglapsforbestfriends.com need to multiple their donation amount by 60.

Prendeville followed up his ninth-place finish Saturday in the Best Friends Animal Society No. 5 with an eighth-place finish on Sunday in what turned out to be the most bizarre race of the year to date.

Prendeville started ninth on Sunday. He spun on the first lap, along with Saturday's winner, Raphael Matos; Cyndie Allemann and Wade Cunningham. That occurred in Turn 4, although Prendeville said the spray kicked up by the cars on the wet track was so bad he couldn't even see where he was when he spun.

Prendeville started over from 19th position on lap two. He was 17th by lap four, and he was scored in 16th or 15th for the next few laps. He had a great restart on lap eight, vaulting to 12th, and he cracked the top 10 again on lap 10 when Franck Perera and Arie Luyendyk Jr. had problems.

Prendeville stayed in tenth through lap 13, dropped to 11th on lap 14, and regained tenth on lap 15. He dropped to 12th again on lap 17, but he benefited from some of his rivals' problems to move into ninth with 19 laps down. He got eighth on the last lap when the leader, Jonny Reid, pitted prematurely.

James Davison ended up being the surprise winner, with Wade Cunningham second and Pablo Donoso third.

ESPN2 will show both Saturday and Sunday's races at 2 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, July 24.

Prendeville is now in tenth place in the points championship with four races remaining.

The circuit now travels to Kentucky Speedway in Sparta, Ky., for a night race on Aug. 9. A doubleheader at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif. Aug. 23-24 and the season finale at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., on Sept. 7 follow.

Time is running out to purchase raffle tickets that benefit Best Friends, which are also available on the racinglapsforbestfriends.com Web site. Prizes are sessions at the famous Bertil Roos Racing School.

In addition to racinglapsforbestfriends.com, bestfriends.org.

-credit: ap/restart communications