O’Connor Beats Cangialosi to Win at NJMP
Millville, NJ - Tyler O’Connor took the win in round 20 of the 2018 F1600 Championship Series season on Sunday morning at New Jersey Motorsports Park. The all green flag race came down to the final laps between championship contenders, with O’Conner gaining eight key points back on points leader Dario Cangialosi who finished second behind his K-Hill Motorsports teammate in a thrilling race. Saturday winner Nicky Hays was third. One 19-lap race remains in the season to decide the title.
Completing the top five were Yuven Sundaramoorthy and Dexter Czuba, who was locked in an intense race-long battle with Chris Kierce and Charles Anti for the final top five spot. Mike Scanlan won in the Masters Class.
Quotes:
O’Connor:
“It was a tremendous race between Nicky, Dario, Yuven and myself. Wow. That was F1600 racing at its best. We were wheel to wheel, inches apart, in some high-speed corners. We made it through consistently. I have a tremendous amount of respect for those guys; they ran a great race. I’m happy to get another win for the K-Hill boys and finish out the season strong. On the last lap I wanted to stay in second through one, two and three and got a great run and was able to hang around the outside in turn four. It worked.”
Cangialosi:
“It was a good race; I led for a good amount of time. I was hanging back in third and tried to make a move up to second and couldn’t make that work. On the last lap I got a good run out of the lap corner and got by Nicky heading to the line.”
Hays:
“Today was a great battle. We all raced hard but clean; there is a lot of respect but the right amount of aggressive. With one more race today, we’re hoping to go for the win. We learned a lot and I have a lot more knowledge going into race three.”
With round 20 in the books, the Championship contenders look to decide the 2018 title later on Sunday from New Jersey Motorsports Park as Cangialosi has a slim points lead over O’Connor, with another handful of points back to Sundaramoorthy in third.