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Rookie Diary: Dad's Surprise Visit to Indianapolis |
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June 9. No, no, no. It wasn’t Wade Cunningham who was
surprised when his dad showed up in Indianapolis for the Futaba Freedom
100 and Indianapolis 500 races. It was Robert “Bob” Cunningham
who was surprised to find himself there! 
Bob and his wife are planning to come over for the Liberty Challenge
Pro road race on the June 17-19 USGP F1 race weekend. However,
Bob had not planned to come over from New Zealand for the Indy 500 weekend also.
But, after Wade’s great start in the Pro Series this year, and his
breaking the Pro car 190 mph barrier at the May 3 Pro car testing on
the Indianapolis Motor Speedway 2.5 mile oval, Bob’s business partners
at Robert Cunningham Construction Limited decided that Bob needed to be
there to see Wade’s first race at the IMS. Being here would also
allow Bob to see NZ’s Scott Dixon in the Indy 500. Besides, the
Indy 500 is also one of Wade’s goals. [Photo right, World Champion]
Actually, Bob Cunningham was planning on going karting in NZ with
Wade's older brother on the Indy 500 weekend. But, at 6:00 pm one
evening Bob was sitting in his office in Auckland, New Zealand, hard at
work. At 9:00 pm that night Bob’s partners had him sitting on a
plane which was ready to leave for Indianapolis.
We were in the pits early on the morning of Pro car qualification day
when, naturally, it was Ron Dixon, New Zealand’s primo auto racing
driver scout and driver promoter, who pointed Bob out to us.
Knowing that Bob and his family didn’t come from a racing background we
were interested in how the Cunningham’s became involved in karting when
Wade was ten years old. Bob explained, “That was real simple. My
office was just a stone’s throw from the local kart club, and at that
time I used to work real long hours on the weekends. The boys
would come down and say, ‘Can we come to work with you, and ride our
bikes around in the car park area?’”
“What they were really doing was going up to the kart club and watching
karting from the fence line. I think it was Mitchell who said,
‘Can we go inside and watch the karting?’ I said they
could. So they went inside, watched the karting and enjoyed
themselves. I think it was Wade, but it might have been
Aaron, who then said, ‘Why don’t we have a go at karting’. I
said, you guys find all about it and I’ll see what we can do about it
from here.” 
“They found out all about it and I went down to a kart shop and spoke
to the guy, and told him what our budget was. We bought two
karts. The two younger boys shared a kart and the older brother
had his own kart. It was probably only about four weeks later
that we bought a third kart, and then we bought their mother a kart and
got her involved and away we went.” [Bob didn’t get a kart for
himself as someone had to become the team manager].
“It really wasn’t that expensive. It was a cheap introduction to
motor sports. We found it was something we all did together. We
worked on the cars a couple nights a week, then we’d practice on
Saturday and race on Sundays. It really bonded the family
together and we were pretty close, even though the three boys had their
moments together.” [Photo above, Wade's 107]
We asked Bob when it was that Wade really became serious about
karting. He said, “Wade was always very serious about
everything he did, whether it was playing Tidily Winks, marbles, or
whatever. He was multi-skilled; he was a very good tennis
player. He played both rugby football union for school and
soccer for a club, even while he was karting. Then when he got to
be about 13 we started to think, he’s not bad at karting. That’s
when they introduced international CIK karting categories to NZ.
We said we want a bit of this. So we bought two brand new motors from
Europe, and Wade won his first ever event.” And for Wade that was
the real start.
We described Wade Cunningham’s evolving racing career between 1997 and
the end of last year in two earlier stories [“Who’s Inside Wade’s
Helmet?” and “Rookie Diary: The Path to the IPS”]. But just to
mention several high points, Wade won his first New Zealand karting
championship in 1998. After that Wade’s dad said, “In about 1999
Wade said I’m going to go to Europe one day and I’m going to be the
highest performing New Zealander in an FIA event.” That was a big
statement, of course, because that claim had belonged to Denny Hulme,
the only New Zealander who had won an FIA World Championship, the 1967
Formula One title. 
To find a pathway to Europe Wade won a major CIK FIA
Asia Pacific Championship in 2001. That got Wade to Europe in
2002, and although that year was a disastrous year of racing he
returned undeterred the next year. In 2003 he won the CIK FIA
World Karting Championship. In 2004 he raced in the U.S. in the
Cooper Tires Formula Ford 2000 Zertec Championship Series. Wade
recorded four poles and seven podium finishes.
Towards the end of his Formula Ford 2000 year Wade started thinking
about moving up to a higher level racing series. His dad
explained some of the key steps. “Wade had gone up to Chicago for
one of the Indy car races last year, and introduced himself to
everybody up there. When he came back home at the end of 2004 we
started looking around to see what we could do. Then two things
happened.” [Photo above, World Championship Podium]
“First we met Ron Dixon. What we did was we said, ‘Can you
tell us, who are the good teams?’ Wade gave him a big list
and Ron said, yes, no, yes, no, and we whittled down the
list. Later we started getting phone calls, whether or not
through Ron or people just knew, I can’t say. Then the second major
thing happened. One day [this winter, in North America, this past
summer in New Zealand] Ron rang and said Brian Stewart Racing is
interested.”
“Ron had a chat with them [Brian Stewart], and we talked about budgets
and how it could all work. The next thing was Wade came over and did
his rookie test, and Brian said, ‘OK, let’s go racing.’ Ron’s doing all
sorts of things at the moment. He and his wife moved over here
[for the season] so they can be closer to Scott, and Ron keeps an eye
on Wade. And here we are at Indianapolis!”
You know where Bob Cunningham’s kart purchase has led for Wade, but
where in New Zealand has it led Bob? Today he is the chief
executive of karting in New Zealand [President of Kart Sport New
Zealand], as well as the vice president of a local kart club.
Bob Cunningham’s first impression of the IMS? “The Speedway is
super impressive. I own a construction company in New Zealand,
and we built a football stadium there that seats 55,000 people, and
it’s nothing like this. This is fantastic. I never
anticipated how big this place is. But housing 400,000 people, I
guess, it has to be pretty big. It’s half the size of the city I
live in!”
After the Futaba Freedom 100 race we saw Bob in the Brian Stewart
Racing garage. Bob looked like he was about a foot taller than
when we first met him before qualification the day before. Then
we looked down. Both of his feet were about a foot off the
ground. We are not saying that he is not equally proud of his
other two sons, which he is [the youngest is karting in Europe], but
that was Wade’s day for his dad. Wade led the race three times,
turned in the fastest race leader lap, finished second, became the only
driver in the Series to have three podium finishes, and moved into the
Pro Series point’s leadership for the first time. It only gets a
little bit better than that. Now Bob Cunningham owes his business
partners big time for sending him to Indianapolis.
After the Pro race, Wade and his dad watched their first Indy 500
together. As Wade said, “Besides being a great race, I’ve never
seen 300, 000 or 400,000 people in one place at any time. It’s
like putting half of Auckland in one stadium. My dad was
impressed with the race, too, and how close the cars run on ovals, but
more impressed by the Speedway itself and the atmosphere.”
And what about rookie Wade Cunningham now that the Indy month of May is
over? His focus is on the next race. Wade now has the
experience of four races behind him, the last two of which he has
led. Wade summed it up for himself in just two sentences.
“The aim is to go to Texas and win. The goal from now on is about
winning.”
[Photos courtesy of Fast Company of New Zealand’s Ross MacKay.]
[In a future article we will introduce you to Ron Dixon.]
[For more info on Wade visit his official web site: www.cunninghammotorsport.com]
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