19 year-old British rising star Alessandro Latif had three strong finishes at the Pro Mazda Championship‘s Indianapolis Grand Prix rounds last weekend.
Having switched disciplines to open wheel racing from sportscars, Latif went into the Indianapolis weekend looking forward to his first race at the historic track in Indiana.
For the first time in 2015, the grid featured more than 20 entries. Throughout the practice sessions, Latif gained a lot of experience around the road course, and moved his World Speed Motorsports car further up the timesheets each session.
Starting 12th, Latif soon moved up to seventh in the first race. However, his car was set-up incorrectly, and so his task was to defend his position rather than to take more places. By the end of the race, he was down to 13th position, which was still a good result considering the circumstances.
“I got a great start in race one to leap up to seventh, but it soon transpired that we’d set the car up with too much downforce, which meant I was a sitting duck down the straights and having to defend for my life. People were driving all the way around the outside of me in the end, and I was pleased to hang on to finish where we did!”
In both races 2 and 3, he moved from 17th to 14th. This now puts him 14th in the standings heading into the next round.
“Indianapolis is just incredible! The atmosphere is electrifying, and when we walked round the track, what really took my breath away was looking down the start-finish straight to Turn One of the oval and the famous white concrete walls and thinking, ‘no way are these guys keeping it flat through there at 240mph!’ That really was pretty mind-blowing.
