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Final IPS champion gets Indy car test .  It was Wade Cunningham's turn at last.
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The Champion's Diary: Development of a Pro Champion - Part 3
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>>For the start you had Travis Gregg, Jaime Camara, Chris Festa and Marty Roth in front of you, Nick Bussell beside you and Jeff Simmons directly behind you.  Did you have a particular strategy at the start of the race?  

Obviously, you know, in the back of my mind was,”I’ve got to stay out of trouble.”  But the minute the green flag dropped I pretty much figured Camara would be slower on the start, which he was.  So was Marty.  I got a run around the outside of Festa.  So I drove right around Chris.  And then I was around the outside of Jaime before the exit of Turn 2.  And I think straight away they threw a yellow for an accident [Jay Drake’s].  So at the restart I was 2nd  and on the next restart I was attacking Gregg. So I knew I had a good car and there was not much point in hanging back or anything.  I just wanted to go to the front.
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Ron Dixon keeping an eye on Wade, with Teena Larsen on left


>>Drake went out of the race on lap 1 and after lap 7 when Fletcher went out, did Doug Hoy [Team Manager] tell you, or were you aware at that point, that you had just wrapped up the championship?

You know I could see who had gone out of the race.  But I wasn’t completely sure, so I thought it wasn’t until someone other than Jeff had led the most laps that it was 100% wrapped up.  And I think that came on about lap 25 or 26, or whatever.  And then it was like it was mathematically impossible to lose, so they said, just do whatever you want and go for it. And that is pretty much when I went to the front for good.  

>>We wondered if at that point you said, I don’t have to worry about the championship from the points standpoint any more and can just really go for the win now?

Yah, there was a little bit of that, but not a whole lot. You know once the race started I knew where we were fast and I wanted to do well.  So I just wanted to be at the front and have a shot at it at the end. 

>>Tell us about the 15 lead changes between you and Travis Gregg when you were racing with him.

It sounds better than it really was.  It was just a case of whoever was in front at the line at the time.  It was more a case of Travis being on the bottom and I was on the outside most of the time   And it just depended on who got a better run out of Turn 4 and who was at the time leading at the start/finish line. 

>>Were you passing him primarily on the high side then? 

Yah, he was always on the low side. 

>>That is where he tends to like to run isn’t it, like when you were at Texas?

It seems to me that way.

>>Were you doing any drafting or sling shoting with him, and visa versa?

Yah, I could, definitely, using him down the straights to get a draft.  And then I was always running a lot higher than him in the corners and that was where my car was fast.   So that was where I tended to run.

>>Was Travis trying to draft you when he was behind you?

A little bit, but he didn’t seem to run as close to me in the corners as I ran to him.

>>For the car setup for this final race on a super speedway did you guys do anything special, like with the gearing or the down force?

No, with our cars there’s not a whole lot you can do with the down force. You’ve got your ride heights and wickers, front and rear, and that’s about it.  The tolerances for the wing angles are so small that there is not a lot you can do.  There’s like only one bolt on piece, the underneath tray, really that you’d run on a super speedway.  So plus or minus a few pounds is about all you get.  There is not a whole lot you can do.  We had the fastest setup on that we had. We weren’t conservative at all.

>>How were the track conditions? 

Really good.  You know, there were no issues.  We got called off in the morning because of rain and then the IndyCars raced.  And then we went off straight after them and so the track was good and it had plenty of grip in it.  They cleaned the track off well, so there were no marbles.  So I can’t complain about anything like that. 

>>So you could run high or low or wherever if you needed to?

Yah, the track was good.
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Wade with Jeff in tow. Photo Credit: Ron McQueeney, IRL


>>What about the end of the race with Simmons?

I think it got blown a bit out of proportion. The thing is about that whole deal, like after we bumped wheels, or whatever you want to say, he still passed me and led the race by a car length going into Turn 3 and I passed him on the exit of Turn 4 and won the race. 

I’m pretty sure he passed me on the apron or on the pit lane and didn’t have all four wheels on the actual racing track.  But even if he had gone past clean I still would have passed him in Turn 3 or 4 anyway because he just wasn’t fast enough on a straight line.

[Actually, as the ESPN2 coverage showed, Simmons got the best of the incident because he did successfully pass Wade and ended up a car length ahead of him in Turn 3.  Then Wade caught up and passed Jeff in Turn 4 and went on to win the race.]

>>Final thoughts on the race?

I’m pretty happy with it.  Everything went kind of perfect, actually!

>>Up until this race you had a different strategy, which was to finish races for the points and not take any unnecessary risks in going for a win.  So you couldn’t afford to take the same kind of risks that Jeff and Marco could before California because you were in it for the championship points and needed to finish races and they just cared about winning some races.  Can you comment about that? 

At a race like Milwaukee if I wasn’t leading [in the points] I would have probably come down [on Jeff].  I would have defended my line harder with Jeff with just two laps to go.  At Indy, earlier in the season, with the yellows, I might have been keener to jump the restart at the end. At Infineon, when I was second behind Marco, I might have dive bombed him in one of the tight corners.  These are kind of things I could have done, but you can’t really guarantee you are going to come out the other side.  In the position we were in I just wanted to keep finishing and I did whatever I had to do to do that. 

I don’t think people realize that if Marco would have won at Watkins Glen I would have won the Championship at that race, so while I was sitting in 2nd [behind Marco] there wasn’t much sense in possibly making a mistake trying to pass him, or anything like that.  It was only [at the last two laps] when we came up on lap traffic and he lost the lead to Jeff that everything sort of went south and that put winning the championship  mathematically out of the way until California..  And you know, we got crashed out at Chicago pretty big and got a minimum of points there.

>>Would you go over for us some of the things you learned in the course of this year’s IRL development Pro Series to end up in the final two races winning a pole, a race and your championship? 

Well, my goal really was to just go out and finish every race.  And that is easier said than done, especially when you are racing on 10 ovals. That’s a big thing I think I learned.

It had nothing to do with me that we got crashed out at Chicago, because I’m pretty sure we would have been on track to finish every single race.  That was the number one goal.  So I’m a little disappointed. . 

And I didn’t know how it was going to go on the ovals, so I couldn’t say,  “I’m going to come in and win the championship or win a bunch of races.”  You know Brian Stewart’s teams hadn’t won any races on the ovals in the IPS. So I couldn’t come in and say I’ve got the best car and I know  I’m going to be at the front.  So there was just a different mentality at the start of the year.

>>Mentality seems to be so important because some times you see some really fast drivers who finish well and some who don’t.  Can you comment on that?

I think that there are good drivers who are at the front most races regardless of their equipment and then you have other drivers who actually have really fast cars and they are at the front.  But at the end of the day it is pretty clear how you can distinguish the two because some drivers are up at the front all the time no matter what and some drivers are up and down like yo-yo’s.  And the ones who are up and down like yo-yos I don’t think  seem to have the talent or whatever you want to call it to stay there. 

You know, its like good drivers, someone like Nick Bussell, for example, who was with two teams, you could never say they had the best car or that they had the biggest budget.  But it seemed he was always 3rd or 4th.  So I’m sure that if he had had better setups or better whatever on certain days he would have been up at the front, but when he was off it was like he was still running in 5th.  He did a good job on both ovals and road courses.

And Simmons was always at the front on ovals and road courses, especially in the last half of the year.  And then you know there are other drivers who just struggled.  They had fast cars in qualifying sometimes and were up at the front, but when it came down to it in the race they just couldn’t stay up there and they fell back in the races.

>>In terms of some of the other things you learned that were important to getting you to where you were at the end of the season can we go through those on a race by race basis starting with Homestead

Sure.  Homestead was the first fast track that I had been on, the first really fast speedway.  And I really had no idea what was going to happen in the first corner and I got boxed down on the inside.  So I had to lift because my line wasn’t really good.  So I fell back to last and that sort of stuff.   So coming through passing everybody, you know, you learn the feel of what’s going to happen and you learn how to anticipate and where to put the car in relation to someone else to get the best draft.  And I think I did a pretty good job at the end of the race passing people and getting back near the front and doing some pretty fast laps and all that sort of stuff.  So that was a good race for me. 

>>Moving on to Phoenix, we remember you had some really great restarts and you had some lightening reflexes to stay out of five accidents.

Yah, Phoenix was like a bad weekend.  We were off in practice. I didn’t know what I wanted from the car.  Like the car was lose and I wasn’t sure whether it was the understeer on the car, and then putting too much lock on, and finally when the front loads, the car snapped sideways.  So I kept dialing understeer out of the car and that was definitely the wrong way to go in the race.  That was so twitchy in the front.  You know I was like white knuckle driving.  I was actually scared.  Every lap in Turn 2 something happened, on every lap down there.  So I learned not to do that again.  And after that race it was like I never want to do that again.  And so I learned I had  to work harder on practices to get the car that I wanted to drive.

>>What went through your mind on the restarts?   

I don’t know.  I could see when people were going to go and people who weren’t taking good lines in the tight exit off of Turn 4.  And I was just making sure I had everything right and other people weren’t, and so that’s why I was moving up.

>>In all but one race you had really great restarts.  What about that one? 

At Nashville I got like an engine stutter.  And that’s why Jay Drake caught me and I fell down to 4th .  And then, it wasn’t at a restart, but in the race at Pikes Peak, I got a vibration in the rear end and dropped down to 5th.

>>We think everybody was happy that the Phoenix race only went 90 laps and not the scheduled 100.  Of course, that race is not on the Pro or IndyCar schedule for next year. 

That was a tough track.  I would have liked to have gone back and mastered it or whatever and do a good job there the next time. 

>>What is the mental change you have to make to go from a 1.5 mile track at Homestead to a tight and unusual, tough one mile track at Phoenix? 

Not a lot.  You do the same thing, just work hard in practice, get a good setup, something you are comfortable with, something that you can try to run everywhere with.  So they are pretty similar in that respect.  Because with our cars we’re not in a position where we can trim them out.  Like we can’t adjust the wings to get rid of the down force or very minimally. We’ve only got the wickers and the ride height and your geometries to add and subtract. We can’t do a lot and the IndyCar guys can. 

>>Then you went on to St. Petersburg.  What were the lessons learned there? 

That was the first time I’d ever had lap traffic ruin a race for me.  That was the biggest thing I would say, learning to deal with the lap traffic.

>>You moved on to Indianapolis after that.  You were doing some good drafting with Jaime Camara there.  You got your nose out in front there a couple of times to get the lead, but you had said that running with him you wanted to get away from the rest of the pack.  And that running side by side was not the way to do that to get max speed and you needed to draft and push him and let him pull you to be the fastest.. 

Yah, that’s what I did at Indy.  That’s sort of the first time I did drafting like that with another driver to try to get away. I did that in karting a lot, but obviously, the slip steam doesn’t have as much effect as it does at a race track like Indianapolis, and at 190 mph, that’s a big deal.  Then we just got shafted with the yellow just before the end. We got one corner to try to race, you know, and that was the end of that. 

We definitely weren’t anywhere near as fast as Camara, but my car handled really well.  We just didn’t have the rest of it to be as fast as he was but I could stick with him in the draft.   I could run any line on the track and I could follow him with no trouble.  I just couldn’t lead.  So there was no point in me even trying to get out in front because he would just pass me on the very next straight.
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Another post-race podium press conference


>>The high banked Texas mile and a half track came up right after that.  That was Travis’ race, right?

Yah, but we qualified 3rd.  You know we qualified really well.  And the car was fast.  It was just a case of Travis being on the bottom line on a track like that.  And without anyone to push me around the outside I knew it was going to be difficult.  I kept trying the outside and every time I tried to pass him I ended up dropping back a couple of spots and it took me ten laps to get those places back.  So at the end I just decided to settle for 2nd.

I knew Festa [in 2nd] was going to try to make a pass on Travis at the end and I was sitting in 3rd   And when Chris tried to pass I just went inside and boxed him out and he slipped back and then went to push him [Travis].  I was in 2nd then and therefore I took a run on Travis on the last straight before the start/finish line, but it wasn’t enough.

>>During that race we recall you learned from another driver that Pro car racing can sometimes be a contact sport.

Yah, that was in Turns 3 and 4 a couple of times.  That wasn’t my first experience, as someone ran over my front wing and broke it at Indy, which didn’t improve my car very much. But that was a one time incident. I was just going for position and he just came down to apex and hit my front wing. But at Texas, that was definitely interesting.  It was every time we ran side by side.  I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen.  I didn’t have that much confidence that we weren’t going to touch.

>>At what point in the season did you have a pretty good idea about all the other drivers?  What they were capable of, what their driving behavior was, what they may or may not do if you were close to them or who did you need to give a little more space to, that sort of thing?

Well at different tracks, I would learn about different drivers.  Like at the first, Homestead, I ran side by side with one driver just fine.  And I thought there’s nothing going on there.  I think because my car was a little faster maybe he wasn’t defending or something.   At Phoenix I didn’t get a read on anyone because you can’t really run side by side there. 

At Indy I was running with Camara.  That was clean.  He’d run down the inside of the main straight and just come up in Turn 1 on me on every lap and take my air away.  But that was something he did all year to everyone, so you just learn to anticipate that.   At Texas, you know, Travis Gregg, he’s probably one of the most straight up and down people to race against.  He’s fair. 

On the Indy road course I was just running in 2nd the whole race.  I was just trying to stay in front of the guys just behind me, which was Simmons during the first part of the race and then Festa for the second half, and I was able to do that. Then we went to Nashville and it was very much the same as before with Camara. 

There are certainly certain people I don’t want to run around.  I think on the super speedways, the mile and a half tracks, like Texas, Homestead, Kentucky, is where I learned the most about other people, because you are racing around them so much.  Definitely, the big tracks are where people are together.  Unfortunately I wasn’t in much of Chicago, but by then the season was about over. 

>>Along the course of the season what kind of learning experiences did you have in terms of the relationship between what you were feeling with the car when you were out on the track racing or in practices, too, and relating specific feelings to the setups, so that you could feed that back to Doug Zister. 

I was pretty happy with Homestead, but I still didn’t understand a lot and didn’t have 100% confidence in the car.  And I definitely didn’t have 100% confidence by the end of Phoenix. But by the time St. Pete was over I was 100% comfortable in the car, was 100% comfortable with the team, and so it was quite easy at that point to develop the car. 

At that point I also then had 100% confidence in my ability to relay what I want in the car and which direction to develop it.  At that point I didn’t listen to whatever my teammates were doing at that stage because I knew 100% where I wanted to go and that’s when we really started to improve the car.

>>Was Nashville unusual because of the concrete track surface? 

It was a good track.  We were really fast in the race.  Just the circumstances in those last 10 laps pushed us back.  You know Arie [Luyendyk Jr.]  and I had the two strongest race cars there.  And we should have finished 1-2, but didn’t.  He had the fastest lap there and we were a thousandth of a second apart.

>>What were the lessons from The Milwaukee Mile where you were in the lead with three laps to go and Jeff Simmons passed you for the win?

Lap traffic again.  I was trying to communicate through Doug [Hoy] with [my teammate] Arie to figure out what he was going to do when we came up to lap them.  And that didn’t work out because of some communication problems.  So I think you can’t try to plan it.  You just have to attack them like it was anybody else on the track and you can’t rely on anyone else to try to help you out because it goes sour more often that not. 

>>Then it was onto Kentucky.

Kentucky was just a pretty hard race.  It was nearly impossible to get to the front.  So I just took advantage of the opportunities that came up and that’s how we got to the front.  That was my best race of the year. 

>>The fact that you and Marco were back around 7th and 8th and then on that late restart you were both able to get up to the front and you ended up passing Marco Andretti and beating him by 0.0009 seconds for 2nd place.  

It was actually at that race were I said to the guys, I think this race won the championship.  Because I think we should have been 8th that day. Based on everyone’s car speed we should have ended up in 8th place.  I mean if everyone finished where their car was capable of in terms of speed, we should have been 8th, I think. 

As for Marco, he couldn’t run in the draft.  Our car was always good especially in drafts.  But his definitely wasn’t.  And so, once I started holding him down low he had to get out of it because of understeer.  So I just forced him into an error on the last lap.  He’s a fair driver to race with.

>>What about Pikes Peak

We were really fast in the 1st practice and then everything went backwards in the 2nd session.  We really had no idea of what happened.  So we took a bit of a gamble on everything and then went back to qualify and found our speed again, but I still knew I could improve.  So I had a good start as usual and we went three wide into the first corner and I sort of got half way through Turn 2 and I thought, I don’t need to be doing this at this point in the race!   So I just settled into the race and just cruised around following Travis in 3rd  because he was my only championship rival at that point.  And I was just cruising and then we picked up a vibration and it just got really bad and I just had to back out of it.  There was nothing I could do.  So I just drove around and tried to finish the race.  And we were lucky to end up in 5th. 

>>Now it was time to road course race at Infineon.

It was about everything we expected.  The same fastest people were up front, like they were at the other road courses.  We just made a mistake with our gearing.  We were fast but we just got stuck behind Marco and he was having braking issues and we were geared wrong.  So in the tight corners you would always get a gap.  We would catch him under braking, but there was never the opportunity to pass.  There were a couple of times I was close to Marco, but if he would have been someone else and if I wasn’t leading the championship there would have been a good chance if I went for really light braking or something, but in the position I was in for the championship I didn’t want to risk anything at that stage of the year.

>>Then there was Chicagoland.

That was definitely the low point of the season.  Sarah [McCune] should have kept her foot on the brake.  When she locked the wheels up and then got off the brake, that’s how the car rolled straight up the track.  Her gear box went right through the side of the tub and cut my arm open. There was a hole the size of a football on the side of the car. I was glad to walk away from that.
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Photo of the Year, Wade at The Glen. Photo Credit: Dana Garrett, IRL


>>Watkins Glen.  Before that race you said you wanted to come away with a 33 point lead in the points going into California, and you hit the number right on the nose.

Yah, I actually did.  That was the minimum points lead I wanted.  We were so fast, but the way the race worked out it just didn’t work out for us. 

>>Since you hadn’t had a pole at that point, and there were only two races left, were you thinking now is the time to go for a pole?

It wasn’t a case of that at all.  It was just like St. Pete, we were the quickest in all of the track conditions.  So after practice we knew we should be on the pole. 

In the race the problem was we were running a lot more down force that Jeff was.  He was fast down the straights and not as quick in the fast turns   I was quick in the fast turns but not as quick on the straights.  And with the warm up rained off we never got the chance to change the car to run lower down force.  So we just had to run with our qualifying setup.  So we pretty much knew we were going to get killed down the first straight and that is exactly what happened. 

If Marco had stayed out in front and won the race, I would have won the championship there.  So I wasn’t in too much of a rush to try and beat him. It wasn’t worth risking crashing out.   It’s just that the wrong guy won the race. So we ended up 3rd.
 
>>What was the low point of the season?

Chicago, definitely.
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Wade and proud parents, Robert and Lyndsay. Photo Credit: Harv Sweezie, BSR


>>The high point in your season?

Kentucky was probably it.  I thought that Kentucky was one of the making points of the year in terms of the championship and the way it went.  Travis won quite easily and we could have finished 8th, and that would have changed everything a whole lot. And then if he hadn’t crashed out at Watkins Glen he would have probably been in a better position at California.  They were expecting to win [at Kentucky], which they did, but I don’t think they were expecting us to finish where we did, 2nd. 

With that, Wade the Pro Champion was off to Sao Paulo, Brazil with Brian Stewart’s Pro Series go-kart team of Wade, Travis Gregg, Nick Bussell and Chris Festa.  They were going down there for the 9th annual 12-hour, Granja Viana, international 500 mile go-kart race.  They would find Pro drivers Marco Andretti and Jaime Camara there also.  And then, too, would be some of the IndyCar stars who would be driving, Tony Kanaan, Dan Wheldon, Bryan Herta, Vitor Meira and Felipe Giafone.  Not a bad IRL contingent with two IndyCar Champions and one Pro Champion!  We were sure that both Wade and Dan would know how to act in their new roles as IRL Champions. Besides, Tony would be there as a consultant if they needed help. 
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Credit: Wade Cunningham


The Other Wade

Having spent the 2005 season hearing about the Wade who was always focused on the Pro Series we want to tell you a little about the other Wade.  First off, a guy’s got to eat, and Wade’s favorite food is Chinese.  To wash it down his two years living in Italy, while on his way to the CIK-FIA World Karting Championship, got him hooked on San Pellegrino water.  He’s not picky though about whether it arrives with a slice of lemon or lime. 

For entertainment and relaxation, he likes to pop on the TV and watch Nip/Tuck, a drama about two plastic surgeons.  As for movies, his favorite is American Psycho, which is about a young 1980’s Wall Street hot shot.  We should mention also that he has become the IRL’s critic on Hollywood auto racing movies.  But back to the Wall Street types.  His favorite subject in school was economics.  And when Wade is in the book reading mood he reads business books about successful companies and successful people.  Seems like he’s doing a good job of applying some of the things he’s learned given his own success.

And if you want to challenge him at his favorite game you had better watch out because he is really competitive and you will be playing Monopoly.  He’ll probably end up with all of your properties and winning. [Rt., Cunningham family coat of arms and Wade's logo. His ancesters came from Scotland to New Zealand three generations ago.  Look for this logo on Wade's helmet.]

We don’t want to give you the impression that Wade is a loner who just likes to sit a lot in his limited free time.  His hobby is training, and particularly biking and swimming.  And from a social standpoint his favorite thing to do is hang out with friends and to party.  And if you ask him about favorite vacation spots he’ll tell you any warm tropical island will hit the spot.  

Oh, we almost forgot about Wade’s favorite color, pink.  When ESPN2 did their feature on Wade he told about his collection of pink shirts and showed his pair of pink shoes. He got some good natured ribbing in the feature from his “big brother” Scott Dixon about his like of the color pink and his pink shoes,  but as Wade said, “You’ve got to be a man to wear pink!”    Pay back time though arrived when Scott had to wear a pink and black driver's uniform and drove the Target Chip Ganassi pink and white number 9 Indy car for the California race.  Scott’s team was promoting breast cancer awareness.
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And should you wonder, yes, Wade did wear his pink shoes to the IRL Awards Banquet, which was held in Hollywood this year.  Wade collected the $5,000 prize for his Pro Series Championship.  Not quite the same as Dan Wheldon’s $1,000,000 for winning the IndyCar Championship, but then you have to start somewhere when you are still in the development phase of your career!  

When asked about his career future Wade says, “My goal long-term is the IndyCar championship.”  And when Wade gets to the championship level that pays the really big money you might see him driving his dream car, a late1980’s decade, limited production Ferrari F-40. Another good taste Wade developed while he was in Italy.  The U.S. street legal version had a base price of $399,000, and a top speed of 201 mph.  We’ll see how short Wade’s definition of long term is when he’ll have the money to buy one.

To keep tabs on Wade in the future just check in on his official web site, with its NEW address:  www.wadecunningham.com 

You can also follow Brian Stewart Racing at their official site: www.brianstewartracing.ca

Again, our congratulations not only to Wade, but also to all of the members of Brian Stewart Racing and to Ron Dixon.  To us, everyone of you are champions.  You are what makes open wheel racing the greatest sport in the world. It is your passion that makes this sport our passion also.

[Rt., Scott Dixon. Photo Credit: Michael Voorhees, IRL]

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Brian Stewart and his team members for welcoming us, and all of our readers, be part of their lives and world over this past season as we did the Rookie Diary.  And a special thanks to Harv Sweezie for providing us with photos during the course of the season, both at races and testing sessions, as well as keeping us updated on things of special note that were going on in the BSR world.

Joe Mobley, a long time friend, supporter and backer of Brian Stewart and his team, also needs a thanks for introducing us early on to some of the right people and for helping to promote our web site. 

Also our thanks to that great Kiwi, promoter and personal manager, Ron Dixon, for sharing his insights with us at numerous races over the course of the season.  Boy, do you know how to pick ‘em, Ron – both drivers and teams! 

Thanks, too, Ross MacKay [Wade’s PR agent] and your organization, Fast Company of New Zealand, for the photos of Wade’s glory days in karting.

We want to express our gratitude to the IRL’s Coordinator of  Media Relations for the Pro Series, Tim Harms.  In addition to all kinds of media support materials, statistical data, and other help over the season, Tim went way out of his way in creating a special “media center” for us and others, including some of the Pro driver’s PR agents, on the USGP F1 race weekend, when the F1 organization took over the IMS media center.  The IndyCar garage E-2 became the setting for the post - Pro race press conference, with the podium finishers Marco Andretti , Chris Festa, and, of course, Wade, which was also attended by a lot of members of the foreign press. 
 
And we want to express our appreciation to Wade’s parents, Robert and Lyndsay Cunningham, for not only taking the time on their Indianapolis visits to tell us about Wade’s life and racing career before he arrived in the Pro Series, but, along with Ross MacKay, building up a readership base of Wade Cunningham fans in New Zealand who also followed his Pro season on fromthetrack.com

Most of all we want to extend our sincere thanks to Wade Cunningham.  He is a true champion in more ways than just winning the IRL Pro Championship.  He is a champion also in coming to a foreign country and sharing his time, insights and his life with us and our readers to help promote motorsports, open wheel racing, the IRL and the Mendards Infiniti Pro Series. 

Wade always made time available to talk with us at races and in between races.  In being willing to share his life with you and us throughout the year we all saw what goes on in a Pro Series rookie’s life in that first IRL season.  That was exciting in itself.  The bonus, of course, turned out to be that we were all also able to share in the excitement, drama and ups and downs in the development of a great Pro Series Champion.  We see a great future ahead for Wade and wish him the very best.    



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