Stefan's debut on a short track saw him finishing seventh at Iowa Speedway after an impressive showing in practice.

The Indy Lights action, scheduled for two days, was compressed into just one after Friday's practice session was cancelled because it was too windy for the medical helicopter to fly. Thankfully the wind and rain stayed away on Saturday and Stefan made an immediate impression by going quickest in morning practice.

He stayed among the pacesetters in the afternoon's qualifying session and was fourth fastest, following up with second place in the short extra practice session. His team-mate Sebastián Saavedra went quickest in qualifying to give Bryan Herta Autosport their first ever pole position.

The race got under way at 8.45pm but was interrupted almost immediately as Charlie Kimball spun and hit the wall. When racing resumed on lap 11, the frontrunners ran in their starting positions for well over half of the 115 laps. Stefan maintained his fourth position, pursued at first by Gustavo Yacamán and then by James Hinchcliffe who was moving up through the field after starting ninth.

The yellow flags flew again on lap 66 for debris on the track, but this time Stefan didn't have such a good restart and lost a positon. Then within a short time he lost two more places, so that he was now running seventh behind Yacamán. Edging closer, he saw a chance to get past as Yacamán ran high up on the track, but the move nearly ended in disaster as Yacamán turned down and the two made contact. Yacamán's car was damaged and his race was over - he admitted later that it was his mistake - but fortunately Stefan was able to continue. He ran some of his quickest laps and was on course to finish sixth until a problem with the fuel pump right at the end of the race dropped him back to seventh. He remains sixth in the championship standings.

The race was won by Saavedra, who led every lap and left team owner Bryan Herta delighted with what he described as a "dream weekend". Herta added: "Stefan did a great job in his first short track race and learned a lot."

Stefan himself, though, was left wanting more. "I'm a little bit disappointed," he said afterwards. "I feel like we had a quick car but we just never got to show it. The number 28 guys did a great job. We were working really hard the whole race trying to move up. That last yellow just really hurt us bad. I didn't do a good enough job of cleaning the tires during the caution and the first lap green again was a bit nerve-wracking. The car was really bad into turn 1 and we lost a lot of places. I tried to make them up, and then right at the end the fuel pump malfunctioned."

Indy Lights now has a run of five road and street races, beginning with a visit to Watkins Glen on 4 July.