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Rookie Diary: The Path to the IPS |
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March 29. It was 2002 when Wade arrived in Lonato, Italy.
He was 17 years old, filled with excitement and high hopes. There he
was, living his dream on the other side of the world from Auckland, New
Zealand. He would live in the CRG factory, do kart
development testing, and drive for the factory team. He would
compete against the best karting drivers in the world. During the
course of the season he would run in the European karting championship
series. A dream come true? Yes, but it was a bad dream.
As Wade explained, “Living in Italy that year was terribly
difficult. It’s not like coming to America from New
Zealand. Everything was different. The food was
different. The store hours were different. Making friends,
going out, getting a taxi, and those sort of things were
different. And then my not speaking Italian really made it
difficult.”
And how was his life with the CRG team? Wade said simply, “I had
a terrible year, and didn’t qualify for a single race. That was
really, really bad! I struggled a lot. There were
confidence issues. There was the language barrier. I didn’t get
on so well with the Italian team.” On the surface it seemed like
a disaster.
But that was not really the case. What Wade had run into head on was
the culture shock of living and working in another country.
Rather than the year being a disaster it was merely a near vertical
learning curve that Wade faced.
A lesser athlete facing such discouragement might have packed it up and
returned home to look for a new dream, a different dream. But
Wade Cunningham was not, and is not, such a person.
Nobody ever told him that the biggest dreams are easy to achieve.
And Wade was not about to give up on his dreams. Whatever it took
he was wiling to step up and pay the price.
2003 saw a different Wade. A smarter, more experienced and wiser
Wade. He went out and won the CIK Trophy of New Zealand for the
second time. The confidence was back. He then moved back
again to Italy with the same CRG team. CRG had not given up on
Wade either. They understood what he had to deal with his first
year.
This time, as Wade related, “I went there much earlier before the start
of the season than I did the year before. I tried to work much
harder on learning the language. I did more testing and much more
driving. And things worked out a lot better.”
What an understatement that was. How much better? At the
end of the season, in October, Wade won the 2003 CIK – FIA World
Karting Championship! And he won that championship against the
world’s best, including two former world champions and a future world
champion. As an aside, Wade Cunningham also became only the
second New Zealand driver to win a FIA world championship. The
other was the late Dennis Hulme, who in 1967 had won the Formula One
World Championship. Wade was also named the New Zealand Herald
Young Sports Person of the Year, and was a finalist for the New Zealand
Murray Halberg Sportsman of the Year.
For Wade that victory and title was his spring board to come to America
for a Formula 2000 test drive. This led to his competing for the
entire 2004 season in the Cooper Tires Formula Ford 2000 Zertec
Championship Series. In that series he won the pole for the first
four races, and ended the season with seven podium finishes, although
as Wade said, “A win eluded me.” He did, though, win the series’
Rising Star of the Year award.
Wade was back in New Zealand long enough to win the pole and the race
in the second round of a new Toyota Racing Series there in mid-January
of this year. But his focus was on getting back to America.
(Remember New Zealand has summer when we have winter.)
Now with the American 2005 season on the horizon Wade’s plans had been
to gain another year of experience in the Formula Ford 2000
series. That changed, however, when Scott Dixon’s father, Ron,
started talking with Wade about the possibility of going to the U.S.
instead for the Menards Infiniti Pro Series. Would Wade be
interested? He was. His interest, in part, was
because when he had been karting in Europe he had accessed the
opportunities there for advancing his career. He felt that they
would be better in the U.S. With Scott Dixon having gotten into CART
and then the IndyCar Series, and having won the 2003 IndyCar
Championship, getting to the IndyCar Series became a goal for Wade.
Ron Dixon had come to the U.S. when Scott had been driving in the Indy
Light Series and became friends with Brian Stewart. Now with
Wade’s interest in the Pro Series, Ron talked with Brian.
Following that conversation, Wade went to see Brian. In February,
Wade passed his Pro Series rookie test at Phoenix and joined the
Canadian based Brian Stewart Racing Team.
For Wade, Brian Stewart Racing seemed like the perfect fit. Brian
had a long history of helping to develop talented drivers, which has
included such now famous names as Paul Tracy and Cristiano da
Matta. Both had started their careers in karting and went on to
win CART Championships - Tracy in 2002 and da Matta in 2003. da
Matta spent last year driving for the F1 Toyota Team.
Regarding Ron Dixon’s role, Wade expressed his gratitude by saying
that, “He was the backbone in the whole thing. He really put the
whole deal together, not in terms money, but everything else. He
did a lot for us and that’s why we are here.”
(Photo above of Ron Dixon keeping an eye on Wade. Teena Larsen, team mechanic on left.)
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