Max Garcia clinched his first career Indy NXT win after 90 laps at the Milwaukee Mile, storming from ninth to first to become the second-youngest winner in the history of IndyCar’s second tier. Behind him, a charging drive from 15th to fifth gave Nikita Johnson a slim three-point advantage over Enzo Fittipaldi in the drivers’ championship heading into the season-ending double-header at Laguna Seca next weekend. Feeder Series was on the ground in Milwaukee to capture all the action.

By Michael McClure and Vincent van der Hoek

Schedule changes precipitated by rain in the afternoon and overnight on Saturday meant the Indy NXT drivers were the first to hit the track on Sunday shortly after 10:00 local. Andretti Global’s Josh Pierson led the way from pole and appeared in complete control until lap 54, when he lost the back end of his car on the exit of Turn 2 and hit the barrier on the inside of the track. That mistake gifted the lead to Garcia, who never relinquished it despite facing challenging track conditions and pressure from HMD Motorsports’ Jack Beeton and Cusick Morgan Motorsports’ Juan Manuel Correa.

In his two dominant title bids on the USF Pro Championship ladder, Garcia never notched a podium on the ovals. This year, by contrast, he had yet to finish on the podium on any track, but his eighth place at Gateway and fourth place at Nashville represented two of his strongest drivers of the season. As the Abel Motorsports driver explained, lining up alongside third-year Indy NXT driver Myles Rowe – whose three wins in the series have all come on ovals – has helped him grow his confidence on such tracks.

“Myles has taught me so much this year,” Garcia told Feeder Series in the post-race press conference. “He’s unbelievable on ovals, so [it helped] just being able to see his data and stuff in the first two [ovals].

“Coming here, I was confident that I could replicate some of it. We knew we had a good oval car. We were testing strong everywhere, so I think that’s also a little easier when we have a really good oval car.”

Practice and qualifying 

Beeton led the way in the sole practice session Saturday morning ahead of Correa. HMD’s Tymek Kucharczyk was the quickest of the three title contenders in third place, with Cape Motorsports Powered by ECR’s Johnson in fourth, 0.0447 seconds behind, and Abel’s Garcia completing the top five. HMD driver Fittipaldi, the points leader entering the round, finished the session in ninth.

Perhaps the biggest moment in practice was the crash Rowe suffered with eight minutes left in the 50-minute session. The Abel driver lost the back end going through Turns 1 and 2, leaving his team with damage to repair before his qualifying run three hours later.

Rowe wouldn’t have to attempt a last-to-first run in Sunday’s race as he did in Gateway, qualifying in 16th position. Instead, that objective fell to the driver immediately after him in the single-lap runs, Alessandro de Tullio, who set a searing opening lap before smashing into the wall on the outside of Turn 2 on his second lap. The accident cracked the tub that had taken him to eight pole positions and damaged his engine and gearbox, forcing him to change to his spare car for Sunday.

With De Tullio unable to extend his pole count to nine, a new face emerged at the front of the field. Pierson took his first career Indy NXT pole position with a 47.6297 combined time, lapping 0.0162 seconds faster than Kucharczyk in second.

Title rivals Fittipaldi and Johnson couldn’t mount a fight in qualifying, with the Brazilian posting the seventh-quickest run and the American qualifying 15th, his worst result of the year. 

Kucharczyk said he was ‘happy to prove [himself]’ on ovals, especially with other experienced drivers struggling. The result was comfortably his best on an oval, surpassing his sixth place from Gateway. 

“[We] were cruising to that pole position – just made a little mistake in the last corner that caused P2,” he told Feeder Series. “The wind, I think it caught two drivers in T1, T2. It was tricky. I just tried to be as relaxed about it as possible. I just tried to maximise the job, and I was pretty happy with the conditions.

“The track really improved from practice – it was really, really quick at the end, so it was a lot of fun. Happy to nail it, happy to not make any mistakes because even very experienced drivers like De Tullio spun off.”

Race

Pierson looked quick from the jump, immediately pulling away from Kucharczyk as Beeton hounded him for second. The Australian made a move for the position on lap two and left Kucharczyk to fend off the fast-starting Taylor, who had moved past Correa on the opening lap.

After 10 laps, Pierson had stretched out a lead of a second and a half over Beeton, while Kucharczyk struggled to pull more than half a second clear of Taylor.

Fifth place would soon change hands, though, as the hard-charging Garcia – who had started ninth – closed on Correa, who had held the position since the opening lap. After losing a spot on the opening lap and then gaining two on the Andrettis of Lochie Hughes and Sebastian Murray, Garcia passed Salvador de Alba for seventh on lap seven, and further overtakes on Fittipaldi on lap 14 and Correa on lap 21 thrust him into the top five.

Out front, Kucharzcyk began to reel in teammate Beeton. The pair ran different lines – Beeton running higher in Turn 2, Kucharczyk in Turn 4 – but maintained position even through a lunge on the 19th lap into Turn 1.

Their battling gave Pierson a chance to stretch his legs, but backmarkers soon interfered. The first such car was Nicholas Monteiro, who failed to set a lap time in qualifying. Pierson sailed past the Brazilian on lap 21, but Beeton had a much harder time of it. His gap to Pierson doubled in the eight laps before Monteiro pulled to the lower side of the track to let the rest of the top four through.

In that time, Garcia had gotten by Taylor on lap 28 and, with no lapped cars in front of him, set after Kucharczyk. The pass was simplified by a mistake the Pole made on lap 30, which caused him to drift even higher than normal at Turn 2 and brush the wall. A further 1.5s went begging for the Pole, but Correa wasn’t quite close enough to capitalise.

Garcia wasn’t quite done, passing Beeton on lap 35 on the inside of Turn 1 as Pierson approached the lapped cars of James Roe and Carson Etter. The gap between the top two quickly dropped to one second by lap 43, and Garcia halved it again by lap 48 as Correa slipped past Kucharczyk.

Until then, the backmarkers had posed little issue for Pierson, but the chain of events that unfolded after he reached Abel driver Colin Kaminsky shook up the race. It took the Andretti Global driver several laps to make his way past, finally doing so on the 52nd lap. Kaminsky let teammate Garcia through with little interference at Turn 4 on lap 53 and set the Floridian free to chase after victory.

Garcia didn’t have to chase long. Pierson ran high at Turn 2 on the very next lap and got loose, spinning across the track and into the inside wall. His car sustained significant rear-end damage in the impact, which triggered the race’s first and longest caution period.

Garcia was now the leader with a car that had carved through the field with ease in the opening half of the race. When the green flag flew at the end of the 63rd lap, Garcia bolted, leaving Beeton and Correa to pursue him. Kucharczyk, who had been overtaken by Correa on the 48th lap, lost another spot to Taylor on lap 65, leaving no cars between him and Fittipaldi.

At that moment, Lochie Hughes began closing on the Brazilian, finally swapping positions on lap 67 to take sixth place. But the Andretti Global driver had evidently pushed too hard, spinning out of the position on the 69th lap after suffering a snap of oversteer at Turn 2. A caution period had already been initiated by the time Hughes managed to re-fire his car, giving him enough time to remain on the lead lap.

The next restart at the end of lap 73 was especially decisive for the championship fight. Kucharczyk, in fifth, was sliding backwards; Fittipaldi, in sixth, was holding station; and Johnson, in seventh, was on a charge, having surged past both De Alba and Sebastian Murray at the restart. Whichever of Johnson and Fittipaldi finished ahead would take the championship lead – a metric perhaps more important than fighting forward for victory.

Kucharczyk’s title ambitions soon took a hit as, within three laps, he slid back to eighth behind Fittipaldi, Johnson and a rising Bryce Aron. The championship top two then swapped spots on lap 77, Johnson diving to the inside at Turn 1 to snatch fifth with a superior run down the main straight.

A collision between De Alba and Rowe, two of Indy NXT’s strongest oval drivers, at Turn 3 on that same lap brought out the race’s third caution. That time the lapped cars were sent through pit lane, leaving the race’s 14 lead-lap runners to battle it out with no further backmarker interference in the final eight laps.

The next four were still spent mostly under caution, however. Kaminsky spun exiting Turn 2 on lap 83 and brought out a yellow just as Correa went to pass Beeton for second at Turn 3, rendering the overtake void.

Moments before that, Garcia had been challenged into Turn 1 by Beeton on the lap 83 restart, but on the final restart on lap 87, he showed no signs of cracking. A superb jump put him well clear of Beeton and Correa, who tried to pass the 18-year-old again through Turn 3 and 4 and this time succeeded coming to the line. Beeton tried to fight back on lap 89 into Turn 1, where his car seemed to be strongest, but a move didn’t come off.

Still, both HMD drivers could leave the round content with their performances, by far their best on an oval. For Correa, second place was his best career finish in Indy NXT and his best result in single-seaters since he scored a second place at Zandvoort in his final F3 season in 2022. And for race winner Garcia, who took the flag 0.943s ahead of Correa, the victory was his first since the Portland USF Pro 2000 round more than a year ago, representing the longest win drought of his career.

As the top three told Feeder Series, grip was a challenge for the top three drivers throughout the race, especially in the caution-laden final laps, with the rain from Saturday washing away the rubber that had built up on the 1.633-kilometre oval.

“When all the restarts are happening, you’re cooling down the tyres and heating them back up,” Garcia said. “They’re just going through so many heat cycles, so it’s like driving on ice, really.

It’s obviously a lot less grip from yesterday with all the rain and everything, but we have tools in the car, so it’s [about] staying in front of that.”

“It changed a bit, not massively, because I think the grip was just so low from the beginning that it was like a reset compared to everything we felt yesterday,” Correa added. “Towards the end, I definitely felt the high line was more tricky. There were more marbles; it didn’t get sweeped during the yellow flags.

“Actually, my first restart, out of 3, 4, I almost went into the wall just by myself because I just got too wide. I was trying to get some air, and there was no grip, so I learned from that. And then with the pass with Jack, it was a bit risky to go around the outside, but it stuck.”

“It was loose pretty much lap 10 until lap 90, so it didn’t change too much,” Beeton said with a smile. “It was just trying to manage the whole race, trying to not end up in a wall. I mean, I survived.”

Taylor did not manage to get into the podium battle in the race’s latter stages but never seemed in real danger of losing fourth, with Johnson coming home 1.8582s in arrears.

“It’s good to show that I’m pretty good on ovals even though we didn’t have a good day yesterday,” Johnson told Feeder Series after the race. “[There were] a lot of little things that got put together and led to us not having a great result. But other than that, we knew we had a fast car; we just didn’t maximise qualifying right. We knew we were going to go forward. I just did that and made it fun for the viewers at home to go watch, and I think everybody enjoyed that one.”

Fittipaldi held on to sixth until the very last lap. A determined De Tullio, who started 21st and ran no higher than 15th in the opening two-thirds of the race, made tremendous progress in the final stages of the race as others lost grip. He gained five places in the final nine laps, picking off both Fittipaldi and Aron – who finished eighth – on the final lap with a stronger run through Turns 1 and 2.

“We had really good race pace, especially late towards the race,” De Tullio told Feeder Series. “I saved the tire at the beginning, saved it for the end [and] had really good restarts. The laps fell a bit short. I think if we would have had a few more, we could have been in the fight for the podium.”

While most of the field was experiencing a different track surface, De Tullio was also doing so in a car he had not raced before after his original chassis sustained terminal damage from his crash on Saturday.

“[There was] no major difference, to be honest. I think the balance was pretty similar,” De Tullio said. “It was a little bit tight at the beginning. I’m pretty sure it was a pretty fresh engine that we had to put in. It’s the same with the gearbox. So at the beginning it was a little bit tight and then at the end it felt a lot better, and that’s when we were able to charge forwards.”

Jacob Abel was in the thick of the battling and ultimately came home ninth, while Alexander Koreiba, the sole Juncos Hollinger Racing car this weekend, took his first career top-10 finish and the team’s first top-10 since Barber. 

“In practice, we could tell in the data we were top five in race pace, but we were just lacking in that quali pace,” Koreiba said. “I knew we had a good race car going into it and I knew we could drive in all three, even four lanes at the start.”

“The race start was chaotic. It was insane, and we were just looking for any clean air we could get. We made the top work – we were one of the only cars I think that could really run the black asphalt at the apexes, and, honestly, utilised that to get several moves done,” he continued. 

“The first restart, I had no grip. I don’t know what happened to the tyre. It was like we went back to green, and under caution, I was doing everything I could to keep heating the tyre.… They heat cycled in an awkward way for us, and I thought we were sitting duck there for a minute. And that’s when Jacob Abel got around me.”

Koreiba inherited 10th place on lap 89 after Kucharczyk dropped two spots in the final two laps, ultimately finishing 12th behind Murray. Nicolas Stati in the second Cusick Morgan Motorsports car and Hughes rounded out the 14 cars on the lead lap.

The championship contenders’ thoughts

This coming Sunday, Indy NXT’s 2026 season will reach its conclusion at Laguna Seca, with the series’ closest drivers’ championship battle in a decade set to be decided over the course of two races.

Entering Milwaukee, Fittipaldi headed Johnson by one point and Kucharczyk by 18 points. After the race, however, Johnson retook the championship lead with his fifth place, leading Fittipaldi by just three points. Kucharczyk suffered a blow to his championship ambitions by finishing 12th, which puts him 29 points behind Johnson.

“I love being the young gun up front, and I love it when everybody’s chasing me,” Johnson told Feeder Series. “It has been the name of the game this year, being up front and being chased, so it’s nothing new to me. I’ve led in eight rounds or something like that, so I’m pretty used to it by now.

“I think it actually puts more pressure on everybody else behind me to go do something magical or crazy. But I think we’re going to be really strong out there and just going to always try for a win. You’ve got to shoot for the stars. You’ve always got to shoot for that win, even if it comes up short.”

After being passed by Johnson and De Tullio in the race’s latter stages, Fittipaldi said ‘it wasn’t the way [he] wanted to finish’, but he remains in a strong position as he faces his first championship battle in single-seaters since his successful 2018 Italian F4 title charge.

“It was a tricky race out there,” he added. “We were struggling a bit with balance from the start of the race to the end. It was similar to a lot of people struggling out there. Some people were a bit better than others and it was actually a fun race.”

Kucharczyk’s final oval of 2026 didn’t finish as he had hoped. Nevertheless, the 2025 Euroformula Open champion enters Laguna Seca confident in his previous road course performances, with all but one of the nine races yielding a top-five result. 

“I’m just super confident, to be fair. I know that I am quick. I am super happy that I proved I can be quick on ovals as well because that boosts my confidence as well,” Kucharczyk said. “I can’t wait to drive Laguna. I think this track is totally awesome. I’m sure I’ll love it. Looking back at Portland and all other road courses we had this year, it’s probably one of my strongest types of circuit. I’m very confident I’m in a good position. I’m chasing the leaders now as well, so I don’t have as much pressure. I can just focus on myself and maximise from there.”

The gap between Johnson and Kucharczyk is the closest entering the final two races in IndyCar’s second tier since 2016, when Santiago Urrutia led Ed Jones by a single point entering that season’s finale – incidentally also an early September double-header at Laguna Seca. That Indy Lights season had the points system currently in use in the other Andersen Promotions series rather than the IndyCar points system used by Indy NXT today.

With those mathematical considerations, Johnson on 505 points, Fittipaldi on 502, Kucharczyk on 476 and Taylor on 428 are still mathematically eligible for the title, with De Tullio – fifth on 406 points, now ahead of Hughes – no longer mathematically eligible unless disqualifications or withdrawals come into play.

The championship winner is expected to receive a sizable cash prize to put towards IndyCar entries in 2026. Curiously, though, none of the top three this season have featured prominently in IndyCar’s silly season landscape, with 18-year-old Johnson himself admitting he had not received substantial interest from the premier category.

“I think a lot of teams in IndyCar, for whatever reason, don’t look at me as mature enough because I’m so young,” he said. “I’ve been racing open-wheel competitively for the past four years now and fighting for championships, so I’m used to the pressure, I’m used to the fight. And I think I’m going to be able to take that into this last round and just be myself and go race with a free mind.”

Results and standings from round 15 at Milwaukee

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying	Josh Pierson, 47.6297	Tymek Kucharczyk, +0.0162s	Jack Beeton, +0.0479s
Race (90 laps)	Max Garcia, 45:16.1455	Juan Manuel Correa, +0.9430s	Jack Beeton, +1.6091s

Standings	Drivers	Rookies
P1	Nikita Johnson, 505	Nikita Johnson, 505
P2	Enzo Fittipaldi, 502	Enzo Fittipaldi, 502
P3	Tymek Kucharczyk, 476	Tymek Kucharczyk, 476
P4	Max Taylor, 428	Alessandro de Tullio, 406
P5	Alessandro de Tullio, 406	Jack Beeton, 351
P6	Lochie Hughes, 402	Max Garcia, 337
P7	Myles Rowe, 353	Nicolas Stati, 199
P8	Jack Beeton, 351	Alexander Koreiba, 181
P9	Juan Manuel Correa, 339	Nicholas Monteiro, 163
P10	Max Garcia, 337	Carson Etter, 161

Read the previous round’s report here.

Header photo credit: James Black / Penske Entertainment