Prendeville Finishes All 20 Laps Sunday
at Mid-Ohio for Best Friends Animal
Society
07/20/2008
By Linda Mansfield, Restart
Communications
LEXINGTON,
Ohio, July 20 - Andrew Prendeville finished all
the laps possible in Sunday's Firestone Indy
Lights race at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course,
but that was only 20 laps instead of the
scheduled 40 due to a severe thunderstorm that
delayed the start of the race for one hour and
caused it to become a timed event.
All the scheduled laps were completed in
Saturday's race and Prendeville finished it too,
so fans that made per-lap donations to the
not-for-profit Best Friends Animal Society
through racinglapsforbestfriends.com need to
multiply their donation amount by 60.
Prendeville followed up his ninth-place finish
Saturday in the Best Friends Animal Society No.
5 with an eighth-place finish on Sunday in what
turned out to be the most bizarre race of the
year to date.
Prendeville started ninth on Sunday. He spun on
the first lap, along with Saturday's winner,
Raphael Matos; Cyndie Allemann and Wade
Cunningham. That occurred in Turn 4, although
Prendeville said the spray kicked up by the cars
on the wet track was so bad he couldn't even see
where he was when he spun.
Prendeville started over from 19th position on
lap two. He was 17th by lap four, and he was
scored in 16th or 15th for the next few laps. He
had a great restart on lap eight, vaulting to
12th, and he cracked the top 10 again on lap 10
when Franck Perera and Arie Luyendyk Jr. had
problems.
Prendeville stayed in tenth through lap 13,
dropped to 11th on lap 14, and regained tenth on
lap 15. He dropped to 12th again on lap 17, but
he benefited from some of his rivals' problems
to move into ninth with 19 laps down. He got
eighth on the last lap when the leader, Jonny
Reid, pitted prematurely.
James Davison ended up being the surprise
winner, with Wade Cunningham second and Pablo
Donoso third.
ESPN2 will show both Saturday and Sunday's races
at 2 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, July 24.
Prendeville is now in tenth place in the points
championship with four races remaining.
The circuit now travels to Kentucky Speedway in
Sparta, Ky., for a night race on Aug. 9. A
doubleheader at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma,
Calif. Aug. 23-24 and the season finale at
Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., on Sept.
7.