Race gains at Road America for both Andretti Cape drivers

Road America was the midpoint of the 2025 season, with both Andretti Cape INDY NXT drivers tackling their seventh event of the year. Brutally hot conditions placed additional demands on the entire crew, and tested the drivers’ endurance as well.

Sunday’s Indy NXT by Firestone event was 20 laps in length, but the fiercest fighting was done in the first few circuits of the 4.01-mile course.

Sebastian Murray and Ricardo Escotto started near each other on the seventh and eighth rows, and were embroiled in tight battles as they sped towards the first turn. Murray moved forward two positions in the first corner and wisely backed out of a three-wide maneuver into the tricky Turn 5. The 19-year-old was running 12th after the first lap and began searching for a way to gain more positions.

Murray was hampered by the fact that the push-to-pass boost system was not enabled for the entire race due to a technical issue. All competitors were affected, but the lack of strategic power boost meant that it was very difficult to make progress through the field.

Despite the limitation, Murray was able to get a run on the front straight and moved his #2 Dream Racing Dubai entry forward one position on the ninth lap. From there, he held position through the rest of the race and finished in 11th.

Escotto raced side by side with his competitors for the first five corners of the event, and was only able to get into single file after he had completed nearly half of a lap. He kept awareness of his #3 Frank’s Red Hot entry through the battle and stayed out of the grass during the close racing.

At the start of the third lap, Escotto was on the attack and made a diving pass on Niels Koolen into Turn 3, placing him just behind his team-mate on track. He had a couple more battles in the following laps, including a nice defending move into Turn 5 on lap 12 that helped him maintain the 13th position. The lack of push to pass also hurt his chances of making any further moves, and he remained in that position for the remaining eight laps.

Both drivers moved forward three positions on the day, which was jointly the highest among the 19 drivers in the race. Murray’s drive earned him the Jostens Biggest Mover award on account of him being the highest finisher to have gained that many positions.

Halfway through the 14-race season, Murray now sits ninth in the points and is third highest rookie in the standings. Escotto is 14th in the points, and is only 10 points away from the four competitors ahead of him.

Next on the schedule is a trip to Mid-Ohio for another natural terrain road course, which takes place on Independence Day weekend.

The Capes

Sebastian did a great job all weekend, having never been here before and got a solid result, Ricardo had an up and down weekend, having come off his best oval finish of his career.

We believe that qualifying is where they both need to improve by maximizing the grip available on new tires, which ultimately will help them in the race, since race pace is quite similar well into the top ten.

Seb Murray

Hot one here today at Road America. Good race, though. We maximized the pace at the start for sure. The team put out a really good car for me today, so a massive thank you to them. We picked off two at the start and one more at the end, which gave us the biggest mover award.

We would have gone forward a lot more if push to pass was working, but there’s nothing we could do about. But yeah, good day. Massive thank you to the team, Lottery.com, Prosperity, and Dream Racing Dubai as well. We’ll see what we can do in Mid-Ohio.

Ricardo Escotto

It was a tough race here at Road America. We just didn’t have the pace today and struggled throughout. But that’s how it goes sometimes. We’ll take what we’ve learned and come back stronger at the next one.

We can take positives from moving forward three positions today, and move on to Mid-Ohio.