The tenth annual Chris Griffis Memorial Open Test on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway infield road course took place on 30/31 October, seeing potential prospects driving Road to Indy cars across the three feeder series. Two drivers in the fourteen-person Indy Lights test came with experience in a radically different form of racing: Stadium Super Trucks. Matt Brabham, a former Road to Indy rising star, ran an official Indy Lights session for the first time since 2015 while Jacob Abel continues his ascent up the ladder.
Brabham, the two-time defending SST champion on the verge of securing a third, drove the #83 for Andretti Autosport in a four-car effort. He has raced in SST since 2015, shortly after his meteoric rise up the Road to Indy ladder came to an abrupt halt: despite winning the U.S. F2000 and now-Indy Pro 2000 Championships in 2012 and 2013 to reach Indy Lights with Andretti by 2014, he lost the ride three races into 2015 due to sponsorship issues. He scored one win in Indy Lights on the Indianapolis RC during his first yea. In forty-seven career Road to Indy starts, Brabham won eighteen for a win percentage of 38.3%, the highest in the system’s history before newly crowned Indy Lights champion and Andretti driver Kyle Kirkwood topped him at the end of 2021 with 62.5%. He would also make two starts in the IndyCar Series in 2016, including the Indianapolis 500.
With few open-wheel opportunities available outside of piloting the two-seater IndyCar and being a driving coach, Brabham has since made SST his playground. He has twenty-five career race wins and finished on the podium in every race in 2021 with a pair of victories. Until series founder Robby Gordon broke the trend at Long Beach, Brabham was riding a six-round streak of being the fastest in qualifying that dated back to the 2020 season opener in Adelaide.
Across the Open Test’s six sessions, Brabham was typically in the middle of the group, with his best effort coming in the fourth where he set the fifth-fastest time. Session 3 saw his best lap time in ninety-nine total laps of 1:25.78. At twenty-seven years of age, he was the oldest driver of the fourteen by a wide margin, which is to be expected as the feeder series generally has drivers in their teens or early twenties. Ernie Francis Jr., a seven-time Trans-Am Series champion and open-wheel newcomer, is the closest to Brabham’s age at four years younger.
“It’s just so good to be back at the IMS,” said Brabham in a video from Indy Lights. “It feels a little weird, especially for me, coming back. There’s a few memes online making fun of my age and stuff, but… I mean, I’m just having a blast. It’s been so long and I just got to blow the rust off, blow the cobwebs out, and it’s been so much fun.”