Though Telitz drew alongside Leist on the outside in both Turns 1 and 3, he could not find the speed to motor past Leist and fell back into a tussle with Canada’s Dalton Kellett near the finish.

Running third at the white flag, Telitz found a run exiting Turn 4 and completed the pass to the outside of Kellett coming to the stripe, edging out the runner-up position by 0.0641 of a second in the end.

“That was an exciting finish, for sure,” Telitz explained. “I wasn’t saving it for last, I was trying to get around Matheus for first there earlier in the race, but I just couldn’t get it done. Our car was good in traffic getting runs, but I think they must have been a little bit more trimmed out than we were because when I’d go along side of him … he had just a little bit more speed.”

“I had limited opportunities and I wore off my front tires a bit in the race … so then I went really aggressive on the roll bars to try and get some front grip back, and I was even loose in traffic a couple of times just because of when I went a little aggressive on the anti-roll bars. We had a great car in traffic, just not the car to win, unfortunately.”

Kellett completed the podium in third after having closed on Leist’s rear wing in Turns 1 and 2 on the last lap.

“We had a lot of understeer going into (Turn) 4 and I knew I had a big run on Leist going through 1 and 2,” Kellett said. “I wanted to capitalize on that and have another photo finish across the yard of bricks.”

“I knew if I took my regular line I wouldn’t be able to stay behind him, so I was trying to play with the apron and get the car to rotate a bit and rotate it too much. I ended up having a moment and had to check up and keep the car off the wall, which I did, but Aaron got me.”

Neil Alberico finished fourth ahead of Santi Urrutia, who got into the outside wall inside of five laps to go after charging through the field.

The next Indy Lights race is scheduled for June23-25, with a doubleheader weekend on the 4.014-mile Road America circuit in Elkhart Lake, Wis.

Full race results can be viewed on the next page…