INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Kory Enders finished 11th at the 5th round of the 2018 the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda last Friday night. Marking his second oval race ever, the Cooper Tires Freedom 75 ran at Lucas Oil Raceway two nights before the 102nd running of the Indianapolis 500.
Despite having great pace throughout the test and practice sessions, Enders was no exception to the demand Lucas Oil Raceway puts on the cars and drivers that tackle the short 0.686-mile oval. On track for a top-five qualifying finish, Enders had to sacrifice one of his fast laps after understeer pulled him high into one of the corners making him have to back off in order not to make contact with the wall. The 20-year-old ultimately had to settle for 11th place on the starting grid.
In what was scheduled to be a 75-lap race ended up being only 58 laps due to time constraints following two full-course yellows. Enders was able to stay clean in his DEForce Racing #11 Tatuus USF-17 machine throughout the mayhem of incidents and lapped traffic to finish the race in the same position he had qualified, 11th.
Enders and the rest of the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda crew will journey to the road course of Road America for series testing on June 11th. Rounds six and seven will fall on the weekend on the 22nd where Enders will be looking to secure his first season podium with DEForce Racing.
Kory Enders
Driver #11 DEForce Racing Tatuus USF-17
“Our overall weekend at Lucas Oil was pretty good for the team. We had a little bit of a hiccup in qualifying when I struggled with some understeer and had to back off on one of my fast laps to avoid the wall. That set us back a little bit for the race since Lucas Oil is not only hard to race on, but passing is very difficult because of the ovals small nature. We started 11th for the race and I think the race ended up going really well. This was my second oval race ever and even though I had tested here a few times it still took us a little bit of time to get back up to pace. I’m looking forward to doing another oval since it’s so important to be able to learn and master these tracks for the Verizon IndyCar Series.”