It was all a bit of an anti-climax for Indianapolis round winner Wade Cunningham at the sixth round of this season's Firestone Indy Lights championship motor racing series in the United States last weekend.
After claiming pole then winning the Freedom 100 support race at the big Indianapolis 500 meeting at the famous 'Brickyard' for the second time in three years the weekend before, the 24-year-old from Auckland went into the Husar's House of Fine Diamonds 100 presented by Charter race at Milwaukee confident of another strong weekend.
But after losing valuable car set-up time in practice when he ended up the wall avoiding someone else's accident the former World Karting Champion and 2005 Indy Lights title holder found himself having to work hard just to get into the top six.
"We were eighth, officially, in the first (practice) session but we only got nine laps in (before the accident) and because we had to put a new right front corner and undertray on the car we pretty much had to start our set-up process from scratch in the second session," he explained this week.
Though Cunningham was only 0.7504 of a second behind pace-setter JR Hildebrand in the second practice session the lap at Milwaukee (at 1.6 km round one of the shortest oval courses the Indy Lights run on in the US) takes just 25 seconds, and Cunningham was a lowly 12th at the end of the session.
The fact that he and engineer Doug Zuster were able to turn that situation around overnight allowing Cunningham to set the fifth quickest qualifying time was arguably the highlight of the weekend for the Lucas Oils-backed Sam Schmidt Motorsports outfit, the young Kiwi eventually finishing the race sixth behind poleman Brazilian Mario Romancini, fellow front row starter JR Hildebrand and a battle pack consisting of Sebastian Saavedra, Gustavo Yucaman and Australian James Davison.
"Realistically," he said afterwards, "sixth was probably where we should have been considering the start we had to the weekend. If we had had more time to dial in the car, we would have been further up the order. But we finished and we collected some more points so the idea now is to put it behind us and start thinking about Iowa" (the next round of the Firestone Indy Lights championship series in a fortnight's time).
Having said that, the win in the Freedom 100 support race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway elevated Cunningham to fifth in the overall series points standings and his sixth place at Milwaukee has seen him move up another place to fourth with 163 points, just 16 points behind third placed Romancini who in turn is just nine points behind second placed Sebastian Saavedra.
Continuing to lead the standings is Milwaukee and Indianapolis runner-up JR Hildebrand with 198 points, 10 more than Saavedra.
Results
1. Mario Romancini
2. JR Hildrebrand
3. Sebastian Saavedra
4. Gustavo Yacaman
5. James Davison
6. Wade Cunningham
7. James Hinchcliffe
8. Andrew Prendeville
9. Pippa Mann
10. Charlie Kimball
Points after Rnd 6 of 15
1. JR Hildebrand 198 points
2. Sebastian Saavedra 188
3. Mario Romancini 179
4. Wade Cunningham 163
5. Jonathan Summerton 162
6. James Hinchcliffe 156
