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Rookie Diary: Just a Second There! |
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June 30. With the exception of the three guys who won the last
four Pro Series races, every other driver in the Series would have been
more than happy to have finished second in all of those races.
But not Wade Cunningham. Why not? It wasn’t that Wade would
have been happier to have finished lower, but that he really thought he
had a chance to win the first three of those four. That’s when
the frustration sets in.
At St. Pete he took the lead away from Marco Andretti during the
race. But when he got stuck behind a slower car Marco made a
great move and went on to win even though Wade set the fastest race lap
in pursuit.
At the Indy oval race although Wade wasn’t quite as fast as Camara he
had the speed to stay in Jaime’s draft, and demonstrated twice how to
sling shot into the lead coming down the main straight with its
start/finish line. On lap 35 of the 40 lap race Wade was right
where he wanted to be, tight behind Camara. Then the yellow flag
came out, not just once, but twice. The track went green for only the
last quarter of a lap. End of that dream.
Then came Texas. Wade stayed up with the two leaders, Gregg and
Festa, from the start. On the next to last lap he passed
Festa. At the finish line he was just 0.0424 seconds behind
Travis; the third closest finish in Pro Series history.
Now it was back to Indy for the F1 weekend road race. This time
Wade’s dream ended early in the race - on the first lap. That’s
when it’s time to become philosophical. There are those days when
you don’t have a chance to win unless the other guy drops out, and you
just have to be happy to finish second, as Wade is about to explain to
us.
Tell us about the start [when Jeff Simmons out-raced Marco to Turn 1, but missed the turn and went off across the grass].
“I went wide on Turn 1 and had to slow up and go to the outside
of him [Simmons] on 3 and just got him coming into 4 as he backed down
a bit. By then Marco’s lead was huge. I tried for a few
laps to catch Marco, but then after that I knew I couldn’t. So I
was going to stay in second.”
When you knew you couldn’t catch Marco how did you stay motivated or did the guys behind you keep you motivated?
“That’s a bad feeling when you know you are not good enough to
win on any particular day, so I had to focus on the championship
points. I had to keep pushing hard because of the guys behind
me. So I kept focused on the championship and second gives more
points than third or fourth.”
Were you concerned that the guys behind you, Simmons or Festa, had enough speed to challenge you?
“They were behind me the whole race and no one actually ever
tried to pass me. They never had a shot down the inside the way I
was set up, which wasn’t very good for the opponents. I could
always get a little bit of a break. I could out accelerate
them down the straight and they struggled to keep up down the
straight. They had more down force so they could break later than
I could in the turns and it just looked like they were catching
up. I wasn’t really concerned, but I was driving as hard as I
could the whole way.”
It looked like you were taking a different line in Turns 1, 2 and 3
than Jeff Simmons behind you. Was that your normal line or did you
modify it?
“He ran a different line than me because he didn’t have any
wickers on the front and was really trimmed out. So he couldn’t
follow me. He had to unload to keep air on his front wings.
So I moved my lines around a bit, but I also had a little bit of
under-steer to deal with.”
Were tires an issue?
“I think they were pretty good. The car wasn’t 100%, and I
think we showed that in the time trials when we were a little
inconsistent. [Pro car practice was very limited for this race because
of track use by the F1 cars, as well as Porche and BMW race
practices.] The track definitely had better grip after the F1
guys were out running, but there were a lot more marbles so you
couldn’t go off line. It was quite dirty out wide. I think
if anyone ran out there they found out pretty quick that it was pretty
dangerous and pretty slippery.”
What sort of info were you getting from your spotter [and team manager], Doug Hoy during the race?
“He didn’t say much of anything, and I didn’t ask him much.
We didn’t talk much today because I could see the guys behind me and in
front. So Doug was just counting down laps for me.”
“That was pretty much it, except that I’m happy to be back in the
points lead again. We test next at Nashville [that was on June 22] and
then have a break. We’ll have to see what happens after that.” 
The second half of the season starts on July 16 at Nashville
Superspeedway. Wade will show us then what he and the team
learned at the Nashville testing.
For rookie Wade Cunningham you have to say that the first half of his
season was pretty impressive. He started out with a 4th place
finish, then a 3rd, followed with four consecutive 2nd’s and the Series
points leadership. Wade has his eyes set on bigger sights for the
second half. Poles, wins and the Series Championship. Eight
more races are on the schedule, six on a variety of challenging ovals
and two on road courses. If you think the first half was exciting
that was just a warm up. In the meantime stay tuned in as we will
have on-going stories about Wade and Brian Stewart Racing.
[Photos of Wade courtesy of Harvie Sweezie of Brian Stewart Racing.]
[For more information about Wade go to his official web site: www.cunninghammotorsport.com ] |
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