Brazilian Raphael Matos led from flag to flag to win Saturday's St. Pete 100 Firestone Indy Lights race for his AFS Racing/Andretti-Green team.
For Matos, who earned the SWE Pole earlier in the day, it was his third career victory in six career starts. All three wins have come on the Streets of St. Petersburg where he has led 108 of the 120 laps he has contested at the 1.8-mile Florida street circuit.
Matos led all 40 laps in the first of what is a weekend doubleheader at the 14-turn harbour front circuit to beat Richard Antinucci to the chequered flag with room to spare.
“I love St. Petersburg,” beamed Matos afterwards. “The atmosphere is great and everything was just working great today with the AFS Racing/Andretti Green Racing car. I just can't thank all of those guys enough. Michael Andretti, Kim Green, Kevin Savoree and Gary Peterson have put a lot into the programme.
“This is great for our sponsors, Automatic Fire Sprinklers. This is a great feeling for them, too. This is our first victory of the year, and hopefully we can repeat tomorrow.”
Antinucci, the nephew of 1998 Indianapolis 500 winner Eddie Cheever, finished second for the second consecutive weekend with Swiss driver Ana Beatriz making history by finishing third, the highest finish by a woman in Firestone Indy Lights history.
“It was a great race,” said Sam Schmidt Motorsports driver Beatriz. “I didn't imagine that I would pass Richard (Antinucci). I just thought that Richard and Rafa (Matos) would just pull away and I wouldn't be able to catch them.
“I'm looking forward to tomorrow's race and trying to finish on the podium again. We'll have to make some changes on the car because we'll probably start further back in tomorrow's race and work on passing through the straights and trying to overtake people.”
The top four finishers will be inverted for the start of Sunday's race after Matos picked a chip with that number on it from a bag after the race. Thus fourth place finisher Jeff Simmons will start from the pole.
![Rafael Matos - Guthrie Racing [Pic credit: IRL/Jim Haines]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/204805.jpg)
