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St Pete Indy Lights: Carlin's Jones, Chilton make front row debut

Ed Jones will make his Indy Lights debut from pole position after leading Formula 1 convert Max Chilton in an all-Carlin front row in qualifying in St Petersburg on Saturday

In what is also the debut Lights event for the British team, Jones held off stablemate Chilton to secure the top spot.

"The team has done a massive job to be up the front with both cars," Jones said.

"Me and Max were fighting right throughout the whole of qualifying, so it was quite exciting.

"I'm sure it's going to be the same for the race."

Indeed, there wasn't much to separate the pair, with Jones' pole time of 1m05.3193s besting Chilton's fastest lap by just 0.08 seconds.

Schmidt's Jack Harvey was third-fastest with a time that was 0.5s down on the Carlin cars, but just fast enough to keep him ahead of Scott Hargrove, whose 8Star team is also making its Lights debut this weekend.

It was a relatively subdued start to the season for both of the series' recent powerhouse teams.

Harvey was the only one of Schmidt's four drivers to qualify on the first four rows, while Andretti's fastest representative was Matthew Brabham in eighth.

A total of 13 cars will take the start for the race, which will be the first competitive outing for the new IL-15 chassis and Mazda/AER turbocharged engine.

QUALIFYING:

Pos Driver Team Time Gap
1 Ed Jones Carlin 1m05.3193s -
2 Max Chilton Carlin 1m05.4052s 0.0859s
3 Jack Harvey Schmidt Peterson Motorsports 1m05.8622s 0.5429s
4 Scott Hargrove 8Star Motorsports 1m05.9220s 0.6027s
5 Spencer Pigot Juncos Racing 1m06.1279s 0.8086s
6 Kyle Kaiser Juncos Racing 1m06.3410s 1.0217s
7 Felix Serralles Belardi Auto Racing 1m06.3635s 1.0442s
8 Matthew Brabham Andretti Autosport 1m06.6778s 1.3585s
9 R.C. Enerson Schmidt Peterson Motorsports 1m06.7201s 1.4008s
10 Scott Anderson Schmidt Peterson Motorsports 1m07.0628s 1.7435s
11 Juan Piedrahita Belardi Auto Racing 1m07.0780s 1.7587s
12 Shelby Blackstock Andretti Autosport 1m07.5788s 2.2595s
13 Ethan Ringel Schmidt Peterson Motorsports 1m07.7582s 2.4389s


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