Missing the first race Cooper Tires USF2000 powered by Mazda race were James Dayson (damage from morning warm-up crash), Santiago Lozano (damage from yesterday’s practice crash), Yufeng Luo (family emergency) and Keyran Andres Soori the flu).

The drivers were allowed an extra pace lap to warm up their slick Cooper Tires in the cool temperatures at Barber Motorsports Park.

Victor Franzoni jumped out to a lead as the cars streamed into Turn 1.  Unlike the three Cooper Tires USF2000 powered by Mazda races at NOLA Motorsports Park, the field didn’t make it though Turn 1 unscathed.  Aaron Telitz spun at the exit of the turn and tagged Mazda Motorsports Skip Barber scholarship winner Luke Gabin.  Michai Stephens and Nikita Lastochkin beached themselves in the gravel trying to avoid the mess.  Stephens, Gabin and Lastochkin were able to rejoin the race several laps down.

As the cars crossed the line to pick up the safety car at the end of the first lap the top 5 were: Franzoni, Nico Jamin, Jake Eidson, Parker Thompson and Anthony Martin.

The field went back to green on lap 6, as the twelve remaining cars made their way through the first lap back to green unscathed.

Cooper Tires Winterfest points leader Eidson was able to get by Jamin at the end of the backstretch to take second place and betan to chase after Franzoni, who held a 1.4 second lead at the end of seven laps.

By lap 10, Franzoni had stretched his advantage to 1.8 seconds over Eidson, who was joined in the top five by Jamin, Martin and Thompson.

With two laps left, the gap between Franzoni and Eidsen was under two tenths of second and as they took the white flag, the Pabst Racing driver Eidson had fallen back to three tenths of a second behind Franzoni.  Franzoni, the Afterburner Autosport sophomore took his second Cooper Tires Winterfest by a margin of 0.4271 seconds.

Talked to sophomore driver Eidson after the race, and while he wouldn’t admit to “points racing”, he did say that he wouldn’t have tried to pass Franzoni unless he made a mistake.

On the last step of the podium was Cape Motorsports with /WTR driver Jamin, who said that his car lacked general grip though out the race.

The results of the race are as follows:

table.tableizer-table {
border: 1px solid #CCC; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
}
.tableizer-table td {
padding: 4px;
margin: 3px;
border: 1px solid #ccc;
}
.tableizer-table th {
background-color: #104E8B;
color: #FFF;
font-weight: bold;
}

The last USF2000 race of Winterfest will roll off at 3:30pm (central) and the grid will be set by the quickest lap in race #1.