Bryce Aron is looking for a favourable return to Portland International Raceway next weekend to kickstart a strong end to his second season in the Firestone Indy NXT Series.
The 21-year-old American driver scored one of the two podium finishes in his rookie Indy NXT campaign in the Pacific Northwest, and enjoys the challenge of the 12-turn road course. Coming in the wake of his first DNF of the season last time out at Laguna Seca, Aron hopes to be able to repeat his 2024 result as the current season heads into its hectic final weeks.
“Portland was definitely one of the highlights of my 2024 season, so I’m obviously looking forward to going back there next weekend,” the Chip Ganassi Racing driver confirmed. “It’s the final road course event of 2025 and it would be great to sign off with at least a return to the podium.”
Aron’s other 2024 podium finish came at Laguna Seca, but the classic Californian venue was not so kind to the Illinois native this time around. With the 19-car field split into two groups for qualifying, Aron was not only vulnerable to the overall fastest time in his cohort, but also to the extremely close nature of the times posted in his session, where finding a couple of tenths of a second would have been enough to lift the #9 Ganassi entry onto row four of the grid. Instead, he would start on rows seven and six for the weekend’s two races — and right in the thick of the action.
A good start to race one allowed Aron to avoid multiple opening lap incidents and gain seven places almost immediately but, thereafter, with a series of caution periods littering the event, he found himself in a train battling over seventh spot. Capitalising on a mistake from the driver ahead of him, Aron moved up to eighth with just a handful of laps remaining and, when the next car in front ran wide, he pounced again — only for wheel-to-wheel contact to occur as his opponent moved back to try and close the gap, causing rear suspension damage that hobbled the #9 and restricted Aron to an eventual tenth-place finish.
Race two was no more fortunate for the American as, with the field exiting an opening lap dust cloud thrown up by an errant car ahead, he found himself with no room to manoeuver as another driver moved over him, pitching the Ganassi car into the air and, ultimately, into the gravel trap — and instant retirement — with broken front suspension.
“Not the best of weekends,” Aron reflected. “Qualifying where we did put us in the crowded part of the field on the opening lap, but I was able to avoid the melee and gain a lot of positions in race one. We were then looking good for a solid points score until the final few laps when, while making a pass, there was contact as the other driver tried to make up for the mistake that sent him wide.
“Race two was everything that race one wasn’t, with the first lap skirmishes resulting in one of the leaders going off and throwing up so much dust that the rest of us were momentarily unsighted. Whether that was the cause of the car moving over on me or not, I simply had nowhere to go. Knowing that the other driver got a penalty for the incident is of little consolation when you’re having to watch the race go on without you...”
Round 12 of the Firestone Indy NXT Series takes place at Portland International Raceway over the weekend of 8-10th August, closely followed by the final two rounds of the season — at The Milwaukee Mile and Nashville Superspeedway — on the final weekends of August.
