TORONTO – Darren Keane has been knocking on the door of victory lane throughout the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship season.
Finally, during Saturday’s Cooper Tires Grand Prix of Toronto Presented by Allied Building Products event at Exhibition Place, the 19-year-old beat down that door by passing Danish pole sitter Christian Rasmussen and holding off repeated attempts at a repass to shake the monkey off his back.
Rasmussen finished second for the Jay Howard Driver Development team, with Mazda Road to Indy USF2000 $200K Scholarship Award winner Hunter McElrea rounding out the podium for Pabst Racing.
An exciting 20-lap race around the unforgiving Exhibition Place street circuit just a short distance from downtown Toronto was interrupted only briefly in the late stages when Lucas Oil Raceway winner Cameron Shields found the wall in turn eight. Prior to that, after securing his first pole position, Rasmussen seemed to be in command during the opening stages, although he was unable to shake off the attentions of Keane.
Finally, on lap 11, Keane glimpsed his opportunity under braking for Turn Three. Once into the lead he set a new fastest lap of the race but Rasmussen remained close behind with McElrea also in the mix and looking for a way past. McElrea and Rasmussen exchanged second place a couple of times in turn three, the second occasion coming only moments before the full-course caution made necessary by Shields’ incident.
The cleanup was effected efficiently by the AMR INDYCAR Safety Team, leaving time for a one-lap dash to the finish. Keane kept calm, focused forward and hit his marks perfectly on the final lap to ensure there was no opportunity for Rasmussen to make a move.
Unlike in the second race of the season at St. Petersburg, where a mistake by Keane while attempting to hold off the Dane at the final corner ended disastrously for both, this time there was no such drama as Keane crossed the line just more than one second clear of his rival.
“This is amazing. This has been the goal for so long; I hope this is just the first of many. But that was super difficult and intense. Toronto is much more difficult than St. Pete, with the bumps. It’s much more of a street race. What happened between Christian and I there was my fault, so I’m happy that we both got a clean finish today. We had some good, close racing and it shows how much respect we have for each other. But that was a battle!”
McElrea also was close behind in third, earning his seventh podium in just eight races, despite grazing the wall a few laps from the end, while points leader Braden Eves finished a circumspect fourth for Cape Motorsports.
Zach Holden drove an impressive debut race for Legacy Autosport, rising from 13th on the grid to finish a strong fifth.