Christian Rasmussen has made up 62 points on Nolan Siegel over the last two races to take control of the Indy NXT points lead heading into Sunday’s race on the streets of Nashville. The Denmark native was third in Mid-Ohio and then won the last time out in Iowa to go from a 16 point deficit to a 22 point advantage.

Now, can he keep it?

Rasmussen finished fifth here a year ago and was fourth on the streets of St. Pete this year and second in the second race at Detroit. However, he was also ninth in Race 1 at Detroit too.

Siegel meanwhile has done his best work on street courses with a runner-up in the St. Pete season opener, a win over Rasmussen in the second Detroit race and whle he was eighth in Race 1 of that weekend, he should have won with leading the race coming to the checkered flag before a parts failure took the victory away.

He then spun late in Mid-Ohio and crashed late in Iowa leaving him with a pair of 15th place finishes in the last two races. He had two straight wins prior.

Combined, these two have won three of the last four races.

Jacob Abel is hopeful to say something about it. The Louisville native gained two spots in the standings in Iowa going from 5th to 3rd (-43) with a pole and runner-up result. He has a pair of second place finishes in his last three starts on the season and was third, fourth and ninth respectively on street course events this season.

Hunter McElrea was 5th, 7th and 4th in the same three races, third here last year and comes to Music City with five top five finishes in his last six starts on the season including four consecutively. His only problem is the fact that he’s not won in the last 14 races and hasn’t finished better than third all year.

His teammate Louis Foster has also come along lately with four straight top seven finishes including a win in Mid-Ohio. He though has finished 14th or worse in 2 of the 3 street races this season.

Maybe it’s a ringer on Sunday too. We have four new drivers this weekend that didn’t race in the season opener.

Two promising junior open-wheel formula racers will step up to INDY NXT by Firestone this season with Abel Motorsports, as the Indianapolis-based team has signed USF Pro 2000 drivers Yuven Sundaramoorthy and Francesco Pizzi.

Both drivers will have three-race schedules with Abel as they aim to continue their climb toward the NTT INDYCAR SERIES. Both will compete for Abel on Aug. 6 at Nashville and in the season-ending doubleheader Sept. 9-10 at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.

Indian American Sundaramoorthy, 20, also will race Sept. 3 at Portland, with Italian Pizzi, 18, behind the wheel Aug. 11 on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. Sundaramoorthy will drive the team’s No. 57 entry in his three starts, with Pizzi in the No. 55.

Wisconsin native Sundaramoorthy (photo, left) started this season in USF Pro 2000 for Exclusive Autosport, with five top-10 finishes in his second season in the series. He jumped from karts to cars in 2017, with a breakout season in 2021, when he finished third in the USF2000 championship with four victories, nine podium finishes and 13 top-10 results. He became the fist Indian American to win an INDYCAR-sanctioned race.

Pizzi (photo, right) is sixth in the USF Pro 2000 standings this season as a rookie, with a best finish of third at Sebring. He also won the pole at St. Petersburg. His season started with a victory in the prestigious Rolex 24 At Daytona endurance sports car race, part of the winning Proton Competition team in the LMP2 class.

Then you have Victor Franzoni back with Juncos and Matthew Brabham, fresh off of a fourth place finish at Iowa in the car that Franzoni is racing, running for Cape Motorsports. Brabham was also fourth here last year.

This weekend’s Schedule (All Times ET)

Friday:

2:55-3:40 pm: Practice

Saturday:

10:35-11:20 pm: Practice

2:05 pm: Quals

Sunday:

10:10 am: Command

10:15 am: Green Flag (35 Laps or 55 Minutes)