Marcus Armstrong misplaced a near-certain victory on the XPEL Grand Prix at Street America after a late-race mechanical failure pressured him to retire with simply 4 laps remaining.
After beginning third, the 25-year-old New Zealander out-lasted a fancy mix of methods courtesy of a chaotic 55-lap race that featured 5 cautions and always shook up the operating order. He was out entrance for 14 laps, together with the closing levels of the race the place he held greater than a 2.5s benefit over Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard with lower than 5 laps remaining.
Nonetheless, catastrophe struck as Armstrong’s #66 Meyer Shank Racing Honda started to sluggish with 4 laps to go, permitting Lundgaard to overhaul him for the lead. Moments later, Armstrong exited the ultimate nook of the 14-turn, 4.014-mile pure terrain street course, smoke began appearing and introduced out the ultimate warning, forcing him to tug off observe and retire, whereas organising a one-lap shootout that noticed Lundgaard fend off Workforce Penske’s David Malukas for the win.
Armstrong confirmed to FOX Sports activities after the race that he acquired no superior warning on his dashboard or from his engineers earlier than the problem.
“No,” Armstrong mentioned. “No, I imply, it was all easy crusing. I got here out at Flip 6 and the engine simply began spluttering prefer it was out of gas, however clearly it wasn’t. After which it simply fully died. So I do not know, we now have to talk to Honda, see what the problem was, but it surely was… there was no indication that there was one thing improper.”
Regardless of leaving with a Twenty fourth-place end result, Armstrong praised the operational execution of his Meyer Shank Racing crew, noting that they fielded the quickest automobile of the weekend.
“I am massively pleased with the blokes, the blokes and women on the #66, as a result of we had the quickest automobile on the market at the moment,” Armstrong mentioned.
“I feel we had the quickest automobile actually this weekend. Clearly, Alex was fast too, however yeah, I imply, my engineers did all the pieces proper. My pit crew as effectively, like each pit cease was spot on. And I assumed that was, you understand, that was ours to lose. We had, I had a while within the pocket already. So for Lundgaard, clearly he was coming, however yeah, simply gutted actually.”
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