Stefan and Walker Racing faced an uphill battle when they arrived at Watkins Glen, but they made good progress and ended the weekend with a strong 12th place in the race.

They resumed their road course programme at the Glen after a two-and-a-half month break while Indy Lights raced on ovals. It was the first time at this circuit for both Stefan and the team, and they weren't able to take part in the test day two weeks earlier. Stefan commented: "It's a difficult track to learn, very fast, very demanding, and it's a long lap too [3.37 miles]. We didn't have any set-up data, so we just had to make an educated guess."

The guess combined with plenty of hard work led to Stefan setting the 16th fastest time in the first practice session, just under 3 seconds off the pace. The 18 laps he ran in that 45-minute session was all he had before going into qualifying, which unhappily turned into a disaster. As Stefan went round on his out lap, a wheel came off his car, the result of a drive peg failure. Thankfully he didn't crash, but the car couldn't be brought back to the pits and he was unable to set a qualifying time. More importantly, he missed out on valuable extra practice.

In the 30-minute final practice on race day, Stefan improved to 13th on the timesheet, having cut the gap to the leader's pace to 1.3 seconds.

Lining up 19th in the 21-strong field for the race, Stefan made the most of the rolling start to get past two cars into 17th place. From there he ran strongly behind the number 2 car of Andrew Prendeville, trying to find a way past but discovering how hard it is to overtake at Watkins Glen. The best opportunities came at the restarts after caution periods, and at the second of these Stefan was able to pull alongside Prendeville on the main straight and then dive into turn one ahead of him. With two cars having retired, Stefan was now 14th.

Still pushing hard, he was running close behind the number 24 car and looking for a chance to overtake when the number 11 crashed out in the final turn, causing another full-course caution. There were only two laps of the race left after the restart, and Stefan crossed the finishing line in 13th place. That became 12th when Sebastián Saavedra was given a 30-second penalty for blocking.

Stefan's verdict on his first visit to Watkins Glen: "It's a great track, really fast and high commitment, but hard to overtake with so many fast corners. I was really close to the number 24 at the end and it was annoying that I couldn't make another move and get another place, but we're pleased that we're making progress and we were competitive in the race."

The following day Stefan was delighted to watch his brother Justin win the IndyCar race and to join in the celebrations with the rest of their family and Justin's team, Dale Coyne Racing.

Read Stefan's Victory Tour blog