AVONDALE, La. -- Jake Eidson of Pabst Racing won two races and Victor Franzoni of Afterburner Autosport won the other Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda race in the Cooper Tires Winterfest at NOLA Motorsports Park.

Eidson, who finished third in the 2014 series championship, takes a 26-point lead into Round 2 of the pre-season mini-series Feb. 25-26 at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala.

Click it: Race 1 results || Race 2 results || Race 3 results

"I'm happy with the results from this week. The Pabst team worked really hard to make sure the car was as good as it could be, so my hat's off to them," said Eidson, 19, of Memphis, Tenn. "Between qualifying and race one, I had a clutch issue. They were able to take the car from one piece to two pieces, put in a new clutch and put it back together in less than 35 minutes. Not many people know how hard they worked to make sure the car was back and running for race one.

"We had some good races, especially the third race. I spent most of the race trying to get around Nico (Jamin) and got him with just a few minutes left in the (30-minute) race. I'm not sure exactly what happened, we were racing wheel to wheel and I was in front of him. But that's racing. I was very happy to be consistently running up front and I hope we can keep it going at Barber."

In the third race, which finished under caution, Franzoni took the checkered flag ahead of Eidson. But his car failed post-race technical inspection and he was disqualified, handing the victory to Eidson.