The championship points chase tightened significantly with two races remaining as Carlos Munoz, the front-runner entered the race on the 2.04-mile, 12-turn street circuit made contact on Lap 6 and finished ninth.
Hawksworth, who entered the race 39 points behind, won his third street course race of the season in the No. 77 Schmidt Peterson with Curb-Agajanian car and returned to title contention.
"It was the perfect weekend for us from start to finish," he said. "We rolled off the truck, we were quick straight from the off. When it's like that it makes your life a lot easier."
Sage Karam recorded his seventh podium with the runner-up finish to seize the points lead with 373. Munoz, a three-time winner this season, is two points back and Gabby Chaves, who finished third, has 369 points. Hawksworth is fourth with 362 points and Peter Dempsey is still in contention with 338 points.
GRAND PRIX OF BALTIMORE FIRESTONE INDY LIGHTS RACE
Race distance: 35 laps on 2.04-mile street circuit
At 12:15 p.m., the ambient temperature was 84 degrees with a relative humidity of 58 percent and winds from the northeast at 2 mph. Skies were partly sunny. The track temperature was 121 degrees, according to Firestone engineers.
12:28 p.m. - Command to start engines by Brian Shelton of the Dr Pepper/Snapple Group. All 10 cars fired and rolling for pace laps. #2 Garcia is not on the grid after not qualifying on Saturday.
Lap 1: GREEN. #77 Hawksworth leads field into Turn 1. #8 Karam goes from fourth to second in Turn 3.
Lap 2: #17 Kellett makes contact with the tire barrier in Turn 4. FULL COURSE YELLOW. Kellett climbs from the car without assistance from the Holmatro Safety Team. Leaders under caution are: #77 Hawksworth, #8 Karam, #7 Chaves, #26 Munoz, #5 Dempsey.
Lap 6: GREEN. #77 Hawksworth leads field into Turn 1. #26 Munoz makes contact with the wall on the straightaway between Turns 4 and 5 after an apparent mechanical failure. FULL COURSE YELLOW. Munoz climbs from the car without assistance.
Lap 9: GREEN. #77 Hawksworth leads the field into Turn 1.
Lap 10: #77 Hawksworth leads #8 Karam by 2.5167 seconds.
Lap 12: #77 Hawksworth leads #8 Karam by 2.6490 seconds.
Lap 15: #77 Hawksworth leads #8 Karam by 3.2474 seconds.
***
CARLOS MUNOZ (No. 26 Dialy-Ser/Andretti Autosport): "It was good, the car. Since then, I just had to take hits first from Chaves in Turn 1 and then from Sage in Turn 3, he just did a kamikaze move. I almost crashed into Gabby. I'm not sure if it's because of my accident, we'll have to see. Man, there's two races to go and now I have to push." (On implications on the championship) For sure, it was a solid year for us. I'm leading now, but one crash and everything is gone."
***
Lap 19: #77 Hawksworth leads #8 Karam 4.4865 seconds. Hawksworth has clinched the two bonus points for leading the most laps.
Lap 21: #77 Hawksworth leads #8 Karam 4.4394 seconds.
Lap 23: #77 Hawksworth leads #8 Karam 6.3528 seconds. #8 Karam has left-front wing damage on his car.
Lap 25: #77 Hawksworth leads #8 Karam 7.8194 seconds.
Lap 27: #77 Hawksworth leads #8 Karam 7.5733 seconds.
Lap 29: #77 Hawksworth leads #8 Karam 8.4596 seconds.
Lap 31: #6 Serenelli off course in Turn 6 and continues. #77 Hawksworth leads #8 Karam 9.7903 seconds.
Lap 33: #77 Hawksworth leads #8 Karam 9.8680 seconds. #6 Serenelli makes contact with the tire barrier in Turn 9. Driver climbs from his car without assistance from the Holmatro Safety Team.
Lap 34: WHITE: #77 Hawksworth leads #8 Karam 10.7406 seconds.
Lap 35: CHECKERED: #77 Hawksworth wins the Firestone Indy Lights Grand Prix of Baltimore by 13.4655 seconds.
GRAND PRIX OF BALTIMORE FIRESTONE INDY LIGHTS POST-RACE NOTES:
This is Jack Hawkworth's third career Firestone Indy Lights victory. He also won at St. Pete and Toronto this season.
This is Hawksworth's sixth podium finish this season (St. Pete, Barber, Iowa, Toronto, Mid-Ohio, Baltimore)
This is Sage Karam's seventh podium finish of the season (St. Pete, Long Beach, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Iowa, Pocono, Baltimore)
This is Gabby Chaves' seventh podium finish of the season (Barber, Long Beach, Indianapolis, Iowa, Pocono, Toronto, Mid-Ohio, Baltimore)
UNOFFICIAL FIRESTONE INDY LIGHTS DRIVER POINTS
Karam 373
Munoz 371
Chaves 369
Hawksworth 360
Dempsey 338
GRAND PRIX OF BALTIMORE FIRESTONE INDY LIGHTS POST-RACE QUOTES:
JACK HAWKSWORTH (No. 77 Schmidt Peterson c/w Curb-Agajanian): "It was the perfect weekend for us from start to finish. We rolled off the truck, we were quick straight from the off. When it's like that it makes your life a lot easier. We did the hard work yesterday in qualifying putting ourselves on the pole. These guys were racing behind. Sage had a look at me on one of the restarts certainly. I was able to hold him off. After that, it was getting consistent laps. The car was hooked up, I could push when I needed. It was just a perfect weekend for us. It was an important one, as well. Got the points to 13 now. Certainly momentum is with us at the minute. I feel good, feel I'm driving well. They're giving me a good car. Happy days. Try to get up to it in the next few as well."
SAGE KARAM (No. 8 Schmidt Peterson c/w Curb-Agajanian): "My engineer, we were joking around before the race, he's like, You better have the lead. Turn three on the first lap, we came close. Got up to second from fourth. I managed to slot into the inside in turn one in front of Dempsey which set us up. Able to get a good run through turn one. Gabby and Muoz, I don't know if they hit. They didn't have as good of a run. I was able to close a little bit, ran down the inside, took second. Really Gabby was pushing me hard throughout the whole race. I had to defend a little bit. He's a great competitor. He knows how to pass. But I know there's no team orders or anything. Every man for himself. He was a tough guy to hold off. We missed the setup just a little bit. I think we had a little bit too much understeer to start the race. Didn't have anything for Jack. Once I knew that, it was pretty much secure as many points as we could, try to get second."
GABBY CHAVES (No. 7 Schmidt Peterson c/w Curb-Agajanian): "First of all, I want to congratulate all my teammates and the team. The crew definitely did a fantastic job giving us a car good enough to finish in the top three. So congrats. We knew it was going to be a crazy race. Everyone was talking about it. We had the top five guys in the championship starting in the top five positions. We know everyone wants to win, lead the race, go for it. We knew it was going to be a good battle. Got a good run on the start. Didn't get the pass done in turn one over Carlos, but got a good pass on the outside in turn three. Karam had a good move. For a good part of the race had a good battle with Sage. Wheel-to-wheel, wheel-to-wall many times. Hard racing is good racing. Great battle out there. I really tried pushing him, getting him to make a mistake. Toward the end I really just lost my tires and couldn't keep up anymore. Focused on trying to keep the podium. But congrats to everyone here."
ZACH VEACH (No. 12 K12/Andretti Autosport): "Today really wasn't the race we wanted to have. The car was there-we had a really good car to run in the race and contend up front with, but we suffered a mechanical issue early on and had to come in to the pits. The guys plugged in, saw what was wrong and got me back out there. By that time, we had run too long on low power and had really burnt off our tires trying to make up for the down on horsepower. I want to thank RePLAY for being a part of the team this weekend. I'm sorry we couldn't give them a better performance today. It's onto the next one and I'm confident we'll get it done there."
PETER DEMPSEY (No. 5 Belardi Auto Racing): "It was a difficult race for us today. We had a problem with the gearbox from the start of race, and I struggled to get the front of car to work. We had to make sure we brought the car home and made the best of the situation. It was difficult, but we finished, and Munoz also crashed out which tightened up the championship. Now we just have to put our head downs, move on to Houston, and get back on point for the final two races."
CARLOS MUNOZ (No. 26 Daily-Ser/Andretti Autosport): "I don't really know what happened. I just braked and needed the car just to stop for the wall. I'm not sure if the car broke or just snapped. You know, I had a great car even though the weekend qualifying yesterday was bad. I feel really bad right now. What can I say? We still have two races to go. Everyone in the championship is really close from each other, but that's another thing we expect. I have to go racing these last two races. I don't know how many points the other guys behind me, but I have to go change my mentality and go for a win."
