Photo credit: Gavin Baker Photography

If you ask drivers throughout the USF Pro Championships paddock what their largest concern might be ahead of the Carb Night Classic tonight, managing their tires would be the most frequent answer you’d get.

While most 30-minute road course races would not involve much in the way of nursing tires unless it’s at the end of a race weekend when a team has depleted their new sets, the 75-lap Freedom 75 and 90-lap Freedom 90 carry a significant amount of tire wear around Indianapolis Raceway Park, so much so that the drivers prepare specifically for it.

“The whole race is about managing the tires,” VRD Racing’s Max Taylor, who is starting sixth in the Freedom 90, said. “You’re thinking about dirty air and when to cool off and when to push, it’s like a high-speed chess game.”

One concern drivers expressed specifically was concerning the health of the rear tires after 90 laps of cornering on an oval the series only takes on once a year.

To add to this concern, this is still only the second year that the series has operated the Continental Tire. While the tire compound will not be as new as last year and has received glowing reviews compared to previous compounds for its oval performance, there is still a degree of uncertainty regarding the race.

Exclusive Autosport’s Mac Clark is looking at this strategy from a further angle, knowing that from pole position tonight for the Freedom 90, he will have to expend even more of his tires trying to get past lapped cars.

“90 laps of pushing 100% I don’t think will be possible,” Clark said. “It’s gonna be pretty important to manage the tire, especially as we start to come up on lap traffic.”

On pole for the Freedom 75 will be Benchmark Autosport’s Ayrton Houk, who got to see first hand how

On lap 46 of last year’s race, after Houk had burned through his rear tires, he found himself in the wall in turn 2 and collected Taylor in the incident, ending both of their races.

“Something we got caught up in last year was fixing our car all for our qualifying setup and that came to bite us for the race,” Benchmark Autosport’s Ayrton Houk said. “(This year) we’ve made a very long effort to get the car dialed.”

The Freedom 75 and Freedom 90 will take place this evening beginning at 8:30 p.m. eastern time. The races can be streamed live on the USF Pro Championships YouTube or USF Pro Championships app.