ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Felix Rosenqvist erased the disappointment of the prior day’s race with a wire-to-wire win in today’s second half of the Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires doubleheader to open the 2016 season.

Rosenqvist led both practices March 11, but his hopes for a win in the first race were dashed when the car was stuck in rain mode, allowing the car to only run at 70 percent power and relegating him to a seventh-place finish.

Rosenqvist’s second race was only briefly hindered on Lap 27 as he navigated lapped traffic. It allowed Kyle Kaiser to briefly close to within a second of the No. 14 Belardi Auto Racing Dallara IL-15. Rosenqvist cleared the traffic a few laps later and rebuilt his lead to a healthy 4.36 seconds by the checkered flag.

“Being new in the series, you can’t really expect too much, but when we came here this weekend, it was the first time that we could really see where we were at pace-wise and we were just right out there from the beginning,” Rosenqvist said.

“Yesterday was just a big disappointment due to a screw-up on our side, but you just learn everything in time, make sure we didn’t make any mistakes today and everything just felt perfect.”

Kaiser’s second-place finish gave the Juncos Racing driver two podiums for the weekend. Zach Veach, Rosenqvist’s Belardi teammate, came home third. Race 1 winner Felix Serralles (Carlin) finished fourth.