HMD Motorsports’ polesitter Malukas capitalized on his advantage right from the start, pulling clear of Saturday’s winner Linus Lundqvist in the Global Racing Group with HMD Motorsports with Robert Megennis running third in the Andretti Autosport entry. The man on the move on the opening lap was Carlin’s newcomer Alex Peroni, who made a couple of bold moves to jump from eighth to fourth by Turn 7.

That demoted Toby Sowery’s Juncos Racing entry and the Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport car of Devlin DeFrancesco.

Following his overambitious start in Saturday’s event that saw him break a front wing, Andretti’s Kyle Kirkwood took a cautious approach to this second start, and fell from seventh to ninth.

After 10 laps of the 35-lap event, Malukas had pulled a 2.5sec lead over Lundqvist, while Megennis was falling ever further back – over six seconds down after 12 laps – and was holding up the Peroni-Sowery-DeFrancesco convoy. However, with push to pass boost not being utilized this weekend due to a software issue, a following driver was largely going to be relying on his rival ahead making a mistake.

Or suffering a technical issue. Peroni abruptly but only temporarily slowed with a power cutout on Lap 17, allowing Sowery and DeFrancesco up into fourth and fifth, and immediately Sowery tried to capitalize on his promotion to attack Megennis. He dived down the inside of the Andretti driver at Turn 5 on Lap 18, but Megennis held on around the outside, didn’t wilt as the Juncos driver tried to crowd him off the track on the long drag to Turn 8, and held onto his third place.

On Lap 25, this battle for third was 19sec behind Lundqvist who was 4sec behind Malukas. On Lap 26, Sowery again tried to pass Megennis at Turn 5, but Megennis had his eye on his mirrors, saw the challenge coming, braked late – with a lock-up – and held on.

Further back in the line, a frustrated Kirkwood finally passed teammate Danial Frost around the outside of Turn 8 to claim eighth – which almost immediately became seventh when yesterday’s runner-up Benjamin Pedersen ran wide through the final corner and dropped behind both the Andretti cars.

With six laps to go, Megennis suddenly slowed exiting Turn 1 with a deflated left-front tire – possibly a result of regularly flat-spotting in defense – and in the confusion DeFrancesco slipped past Sowery to claim third, while Kirkwood passed Peroni to claim fifth as Megennis trickled slowly to the pits. Teammate Frost would suffer a similar problem on the final lap.

Malukas scored a well deserved win by over six seconds, no doubt ruing what might have been yesterday, when he was nudged off track by Kirkwood. Lundqvist takes an early lead in the championship with a first and a second from the weekend, while Kirkwood in fifth salvaged what he could from a messy weekend in which the Andretti cars never looked the equal of their GMG/HMD rivals.