Evan Cooley emerged victorious in USF2000’s Freedom 75 at Indianapolis Raceway Park on Thursday evening ahead of his Exclusive Autosport teammate Gabriel Cahan and points leader Sebastián Garzón as 2025 race winner Anthony Martella was eliminated in a mid-race collision with a car about to be lapped. Feeder Series reviews what happened and spoke to several of the race’s key figures.

By Michael McClure and Vincent van der Hoek

Even before qualifying for USF2000’s flagship racing event had begun, Evan Cooley was already on course to make history. A 20.8152-second time in practice put him on course to topple the qualifying track record set by Aaron Justus in the previous iteration of USF2000 in 2000, and even though he did not go faster in qualifying, a 20.8185s was enough to take the honours anyways.

In truth, Cooley was not the first to break the track record. That accolade went to his Exclusive Autosport teammate Anthony Martella, who went earlier in the series’ one-shot qualifying format. The Canadian’s 20.8424s stood as the second-fastest time overall to give Exclusive a front-row lockout in qualifying.

When the green flag waved for the 75-lap race three hours later, Martella immediately got the better of his teammate on the outside line and took the lead of the race on the back straight. Gabriel Cahan made up a spot on Garzón the next lap around the outside line as a clear top four began to solidify, with DEForce Racing’s Thomas Nordquist, who qualified a career-best fourth, leading a train from fifth place downwards.

Nordquist told Feeder Series before the race that ‘there was definitely a lot more’ on the table after qualifying at his first-ever oval. But his hopes of a podium were fading, and he was finally overhauled on lap 24 by eighth-place starter Liam Loiacono, who used the high line to make quick work of Brad Majman and Nordquist on successive laps. 

“I actually didn’t really know what I was doing at the start,” Loiacono told Feeder Series. “For the first probably 10 laps, I just put the car in the wrong spots. Put me in a bad position to start with, and then I figured it out a little bit, found some clear air, and started using the high line to pass people and made my way forward.”

Meanwhile, at the front, Martella built up a two-second lead by lap 33, when he first encountered lapped traffic. He passed Lucas Nanji, Jack Mohrhardt and Brenden Cooley without issue and eyed the JHDD car of Erik Holm.

The car he needed to watch, though, was 15th-placed Cal Peter, who had been running the high line like his JHDD teammates. On lap 43, the American went a little too high and lost control of the car into Turn 4, spinning down the track and then sliding up the banking – where Martella was going by. The errant JHDD car clipped the rear-left tyre of Martella’s car and broke its suspension, sending the rear wing flying into the grandstands and Martella’s hopes of back-to-back wins flying out the window.

This incident resulted in Martella’s fourth non-finish of the season, none of them unequivocally in his control. Upon emerging from his stricken car, he threw his HANS device down pit lane in agony as he made his way back to the infield.

Martella and Peter’s accident handed the race lead back to Cooley, who led the field back to green on lap 54. The 19-year-old went on to control the rest of the race and take the win. Having inherited second, Cahan held off a late charge from Garzón to keep second place and secure an Exclusive Autosport 1-2, while the points leader kept his streak of podium finishes in all races alive. 

Though his maiden victory was still cause for celebration, Cooley said Martella ‘definitely deserved’ victory too and admitted that he was nearly taken out in the incident.

“He was right in front of me, so it was hard getting down. It was really close. I almost hit him but got around it. I had a lapped car in between me [and Cahan] for the restart, so that made it pretty easy. I just checked out from there, maintained the pace, didn’t push anything too hard or risk anything and brought it home in the end,” Cooley said. “It’s awesome getting my first win here at IRP – great track to do it, and a 1-2 for the team is just awesome.”

Loiacono finished 1.5731s off the podium, having used the high line to his advantage early in the race before running out of tyres. 

“We had always done that at Jay Howard Driver Development,” Loiacono said about his team’s choice of racing line. “Anthony won the race by a mile by doing so, and Brad [Majman] came from 13th all the way up to third last year, so we were making really good inroads. We seemed to be the only team doing it, then we turned up this year and everyone’s copying us. It felt really tough. We just didn’t have that advantage that we had the last few years.”

Brad Majman finished the race in fifth as the best Pabst Racing driver, with João Vergara finishing sixth as the best VRD Racing driver from 12th in the starting lineup. Wian Boshoff edged out Eddie Beswick in a race-long battle for seventh place, with Nordquist slipping to ninth and Ryan Giannetta rounding out the top 10.

After the Freedom 75, Garzón still has a commanding lead in the championship with 174 points, while Majman remains in second place, 54 points behind, with 120 points. Race winner Cooley moves up to third place with 114 points, swapping places with Eddie Beswick, who now sits in fourth in the standings with 97 points after finishing eighth. Gabriel Cahan was the biggest mover in the standings, going from 12th to seventh off the back of his second place.

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying	Evan Cooley, 20.8185	Anthony Martella, +0.0239s	Sebastián Garzón, +0.1423s
Race (75 laps)	Evan Cooley, 31:01.6779	Gabriel Cahan, +1.4702s	Sebastián Garzón, +2.3425s

Standings	Drivers	Teams	Rookies
P1	Sebastián Garzón, 174	Exclusive Autosport, 137	João Vergara, 88
P2	Brad Majman, 120	DEForce Racing, 132	Liam Loiacono, 85
P3	Evan Cooley, 114	Pabst Racing, 127	Gabriel Cahan, 84
P4	Eddie Beswick, 97	VRD Racing, 92	Ayrton Cahan, 77
P5	João Vergara, 88	JHDD powered by ECR, 49	Wesley Gundler, 64
P6	Liam Loiacono, 85	PFH Racing (formerly Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing), 39	Oliver Wheldon, 63
P7	Gabriel Cahan, 84	Zanella Racing, 36	Thomas Nordquist, 52
P8	Ayrton Cahan, 77	ENVE Motorsports, 32	Lucas Nanji, 49
P9	Wian Boshoff, 66		Leonardo Escorpioni, 45
P10	Ryan Giannetta, 64		Callahan Peter, 40

Header photo credit: Gavin Baker