Indy NXT’s double-header at the iconic Road America circuit produced two entertaining races, two new winners for 2026 and a post-race disqualification that changed the complexion of the weekend. Feeder Series was on the ground to review the action and capture the biggest storylines.

By Michael McClure and Vincent van der Hoek

Two weeks after Myles Rowe went from last to first to claim his first win of this season, several more drivers staged memorable comebacks at Road America, particularly in the second race. The spoils went to Lochie Hughes and Matteo Nannini, who helped turn tough starts to the season around with victories in races one and two respectively. The latter’s triumph was only confirmed after the race, however, as original winner Alessandro de Tullio was disqualified for a tyres infringement. In the end, Nikita Johnson’s narrow points lead remained intact as both he and closest challenger Tymek Kucharczyk added to their unbroken streaks of top-10 finishes this season. 

Practice and qualifying

Practice on Friday afternoon suggested dominance from Andretti Global, who locked out the top three spots. Max Taylor led the way with a 1:53.1419, followed by Lochie Hughes in second, 0.1313 seconds behind, and Josh Pierson in third, 0.1785s behind. Sebastian Murray in the fourth Andretti car was seventh, his session marked by a half-spin that brought him just inches from the wall exiting Turn 6.

But come Saturday, they proved no match for Alessandro de Tullio, who was on another level compared to the rest of the Indy NXT grid when it came to qualifying. Celebrating his 20th birthday that day, the Argentinian rookie claimed pole position for both races by setting the fastest and second-fastest laps in the split-group qualifying session. That brought his total number of poles to a remarkable seven from 10 races, with seven races still to go. 

Championship leader Nikita Johnson was the fastest in the first qualifying group, putting him alongside the AJ Foyt Racing driver on the front row for race one. Matteo Nannini was a surprise third in the other Cape Motorsports by ECR car, just 0.0013s faster than Pierson in his group, with Hughes splitting the pair as the top-ranked Andretti driver after a late effort lifted him to second place in his group.

Johnson’s primary title rivals didn’t do so well. HMD Motorsports drivers Enzo Fittipaldi and Tymek Kucharczyk were also part of the first group, and they ended up fourth and seventh in group respectively. Kucharczyk then dropped further on the grid for both races after a penalty for impeding Colin Kaminsky cost him his two best lap times.

Race 1

De Tullio led the field to green for race one, but Hughes had an even better jump. The Andretti Global driver went from fourth to second with a neat move around the outside through Turn 1, effectively swapping places with Johnson.

Behind them, Fittipaldi, who started seventh, threw away his chances of a good result by hitting Pierson ahead of him, breaking his front wing and falling to the rear of the field. The first caution period then came out later that lap after Jordan Missig bounced across the grass at the Kink and crashed into the outside wall, leaving him with a damaged front-left corner. 

While Missig crashed, Fittipaldi went for an expedition of his own as he seemingly sought a shortcut to return to pit lane. In a bizarre scene, the Brazilian wound up on the access roads on the inside of the track. By that point seemingly lost and censured over the radio by his engineer, he eventually found his way to his HMD mechanics, who were awaiting him in pit lane with a new nose cone. He rejoined the race 10 laps down after the team made repairs.

When the race got back underway on lap five, De Tullio and Hughes maintained their positions at the front, while Johnson was passed on either side by Jack Beeton and Pierson. The Andretti driver then made a dive down the inside at Turn 5 to snatch fourth.

The racing action, however, was short-lived as Alexander Koreiba collided with Nicholas Monteiro going into Canada Corner. Koreiba suffered race-ending damage, while Monteiro rejoined with help from the safety team.

The following restart on lap nine was also brief, but not before Hughes was able to pass De Tullio for the lead of the race around the outside of Turn 1. Behind them, Bryce Aron hit the back of Kaminsky, causing both cars to spin and bringing out the third caution. Aron received a drive-through penalty for causing the incident. He eventually finished 21st as the last car on the lead lap.

The final restart came at the end of lap 11, and Pierson made quick work of Nannini to snatch the last podium place entering Turn 1. He set the fastest lap on the 13th tour as he began hunting down the polesitter, finally getting close enough in the last two laps. The decisive move for second on Pierson’s part came three corners from the end, when he went around the outside of De Tullio at Canada Corner to secure Andretti a 1-2 finish.

Last year’s race ended with a similar last-lap pass for the podium, though that time Pierson was on the losing end. An HMD driver at the time, Pierson was running third for almost the entire race until the final lap, when he finally succumbed to Hughes’ pressure by running wide at Turn 5 and allowing the Australian through.

“I had to really defend that race,” Pierson told Feeder Series on reflection in the post-session press conference. “With Lochie constantly on the attack, I definitely learned a lot about managing a race in general here, especially when it can get really hectic.”

Both drivers evidently took a step up in pace and racecraft a year later. Hughes secured his first victory of the season by 0.7827s, a result elevated him to fifth in the points, 55 behind Johnson. He contended in the press conference that his volatile stat line belied his true pace and title-challenging ability in 2026.

“Honestly, I feel like since Indy, I’ve been really quick. I should have won Indy race one. Detroit, I should have been on pole if I didn’t stuff up. Obviously, I did stuff up, and then the race was a blank. Gateway we poled it,” Hughes said. “The first few races of the season, we really struggled. It’s just been hard. When you’re on the back foot, things seem to get a bit worse. It’s nice starting to get some momentum, but I think for sure, anything’s possible the rest of the season.”

Behind the podium finishers, fellow Australian Beeton likewise recorded his best result of the campaign in fourth, passing Nannini at Canada Corner a lap before Pierson made his move on De Tullio. Johnson came home sixth but nonetheless extended his championship lead to 11 points, with Kucharczyk slotting into second place overall following Fittipaldi’s difficult race. The Polish driver finished the race eighth, behind Juan Manuel Correa and ahead of Abel Motorsports teammates Myles Rowe and Max Garcia.

“It was hard to drive,” Pierson added. “It was really greasy off line. There’s one groove. You could get slotted in in one position, you could really get the run, but it was really fine margins.”

Race 2

Second-fastest laps put De Tullio and Johnson on the front row and Beeton and Nannini on the second for race two’s rolling start. The big drama, however, happened on the third row, which contained Saturday’s top two finishers.

Entering Turn 3 on the opening lap, Hughes looked to the inside of Beeton, but the pair made contact, which sent the HMD Motorsports rookie into the grass. Pierson behind, unable to slow in time, mounted the Australian’s rear wing and went off himself, leaving both cars with damage that necessitated lengthy pit stops. Hughes rejoined three laps down and Pierson four laps down, though the American ultimately retired a few laps from the end.

Out front, as De Tullio eked out a lead, Johnson once again struggled for race pace and grip. He lost second position to Nannini at Turn 6 on lap two after sliding through the previous corner. From fourth place, Fittipaldi also began losing pace – and track position – early on, with Taylor passing him on lap four and Kucharczyk, who had started 16th, following suit a lap later.

On lap six, the race’s first caution came out after James Roe got beached in the gravel exiting Turn 13. Garcia used the interruption to pit for a second time after coming in on lap three to repair damage sustained in contact with teammate Rowe on the third lap.

De Tullio and Nannini were unchallenged at the restart on lap eight, but Johnson behind was not so secure. Kucharczyk had sailed past Taylor by the time the field reached Turn 1 and quickly set his sights on the points leader, hoping to make an overtake as crucial in the race as it would be in the standings. The Polish driver, however, went wide at Turn 5 while on the outside line, dropping back to sixth and losing two more positions with his line still compromised for the next left-hander at Turn 6.

Now eighth, the same spot where he had been on lap one, Kucharczyk had 10 more laps to try to regain his podium. He immediately got to work on lap nine with an attempt on Rowe at Turn 5, but it was only a lap later, at Turn 1, that he made the move stick. He followed that bold pass on the American with another on Murray at Turn 5 on lap 11. By the end of the lap Kucharczyk was back in the top five, having slipped past title rival Fittipaldi in Turn 12 too, and he made it four positions gained in three laps by executing the switchback manoeuvre on Taylor at Turn 5 on lap 12. 

“I felt like I could overtake everywhere,” Kucharczyk told Feeder Series after the race.

“I was struggling a lot this weekend with the feeling with the car, with the setup, and overnight I just sat down with the engineers and went through everything and came up with a plan. Today morning, I woke up being so much more confident. I just felt like, ‘Okay, this is going to be my day, this is going to be my race,’ and I just tried to put on a show,” he added. “There was some degradation, but in my case I was just getting quicker and quicker and quicker, whereas everyone else was just getting slower.”

Kucharczyk’s race-winning pace on fresher tyres was certainly on full display, though De Tullio and Nannini were a bit too far to be caught. Johnson, however, seemed to be within reach. Indeed, the American stood little chance against the flying Kucharczyk, who zipped past down the main straight on lap 15 – moments before the next full-course caution due to Kaminsky’s crash against the pit wall.

That caution period set up a final-lap shootout on the roughly 6.5-kilometre track. Kucharczyk had pace in hand, but De Tullio had the most push to pass remaining, using up the remainder of his 33-second allocation to ensure he wouldn’t be caught at the end. He crossed the line with 1.0584s in hand over Nannini, who finished just 0.1334s ahead of Kucharczyk – a newcomer to Road America.

While Kucharczyk’s surge was spectacular, Nannini’s podium finish was too, in a broader sense. The Italian driver returned to the cockpit for the first time since a partial Indy NXT season in 2023 cut short by funding issues. Racing as points leader Johnson’s teammate in the small but mighty Cape Motorsports team, Nannini had spent the first half of the season gaining valuable seat time alongside his work managing USF2000 squad ENVE Motorsport.

“I hope to come [to the podium] a lot earlier than now,” he told Feeder Series in the post-race press conference. “I feel like now we’re at the point in the championship where I don’t really have to look, I have to go race by race. I don’t have much to lose. I feel we were close a couple of times, Arlington and Indy. We were taken away a few laps to the end. [I’m] just relieved to be here now.”

In the end, there was more than relief. About an hour after the race ended, word began circulating in the paddock that De Tullio was at risk of losing his victory to a tyre infringement. An upset De Tullio walked past Feeder Series shortly before 2 pm local, when the news officially broke that he and AJ Foyt teammate Monteiro had both been disqualified from race two. De Tullio had started the race on the tyres that Monteiro used in qualifying and vice versa – a violation of rule 15.1.3, which states that entrants must not compete with tyres allocated to other competitors. They also broke rule 1.12.2 stipulating that entrants start one of the two races of a double-header on their qualifying tyres.

Nannini therefore inherited the victory, good for 50 points with De Tullio’s points for laps led not reassigned. Kucharczyk was elevated to second, closing his points gap to new third-place finisher Johnson from eight to six. Fellow title contender Fittipaldi moved up to fourth and Rowe to fifth.

Another of the race’s major recovery drives came from Beeton, who was caught up in the opening-lap incident with Hughes and Pierson and fell to the back on the opening lap. But he, like Kucharczyk, gradually worked his way through the field. He reached the top 10 by the race’s halfway point; took ninth from Rowe on lap 10, having survived contact with the Abel Motorsports driver; went past Kaminsky for eighth on lap 12; and profited from a battle between Fittipaldi and Murray to pass the Scotsman for seventh on lap 14.

While Rowe got by on the final restart, Beeton gained another spot as Taylor struggled through the final lap, dropping to 17th at the flag after a spin at the final corner. De Tullio’s disqualification promoted him to sixth, a strong comeback that followed his season high of fourth on Saturday.

“Definitely could’ve and should’ve been better,” Beeton told Feeder Series after the race and before De Tullio’s exclusion. “To be really annoyed with P4 and P7 this weekend shows we’re making some good progress. That’s our two best results of the season so far. Especially that race two, starting P3 and then getting taken out lap one, I was P22 and then came back to P7. It shows, honestly, that we should’ve been on the podium very easily, if not maybe more.”

Correa joined Beeton at the back on the opening lap after having to avoid the early incident. He quietly followed the Australian through the field and into seventh, with Salvador de Alba in eighth putting five of the HMD-affiliated cars in the top eight.

Chip Ganassi Racing teammates Niels Koolen and Aron rounded out the top 10 following De Tullio’s disqualification. Monteiro was excluded from 15th place.

Mid-Ohio next week serves as the championship’s fourth double-header weekend of five this season, and Johnson enters the round with 350 points, leading Kucharczyk on 344, Fittipaldi on 323, Taylor on 289, Hughes on 269, Rowe on 264 and De Tullio on 249. All seven drivers have won a race already this season, with ninth-placed Nannini on 209 points joining them as the eighth from 10 races. In the meantime, teams and drivers are testing at the Milwaukee oval today.

Header photo credit: Travis Hinkle / Penske Entertainment