March 29. The second Menards Infiniti Pro Series race for Wade, March 19,
was at the 1.0 mile oval Phoenix International Raceway. As former Indy car driver Robbie Buhl said on the ESPN2
coverage of the race, “This is the most difficult track these drivers
will race on all season.”
Wade’s introduction to this track had been at the IRL practice back in
February. His first impression was simply, “It was
difficult...This track and the car I was driving required disciplines
different from my past experience. The speeds were a lot
faster. And everything is coming at you a lot quicker. In
these cars, the consequences of your actions are a lot greater than in
those I had driven before.”
On race weekend, Wade qualified eighth, and finished third. It
was his first Pro Series podium finish. He ended up with the
third fastest race lap time. Not bad I’d say for only his second Pro
race, but then Wade has his own criteria, expectations and goals.
Wade and his teammate, Al Unser, had qualified eighth and ninth
respectively in the field of 15 cars. And in Wade’s words,
“Qualifying was a disaster! The car was good through turns three
and four. We could easily run through those flat out, but we struggled
with turns one and two, as we did all weekend.” The turn 1-2
combination is a tight non-constant radius turn while 3-4 is a wider,
more open constant radius turn. The car set-up challenge is that
what is best for 3-4 is not good for 1-2, and visa versa. It is
hard to get just the right balance.
Because of cool track temperatures, cold tire temperatures and eager
drivers, the race turned out to be a bit of a demolition derby.
There were five accident caused yellows, and before the race was over
seven cars had been taken out of the race.
For Wade, however, the race was a very productive learning
experience. “I was reasonably happy with the result. I
think maybe we could have done a little bit better. I was very
good on restarts, but we really struggled on cold tires because of all
of the restarts. It seemed like for awhile there were no more
than ten laps before there was a yellow, and the tires were really
warmed up.”
He added, “I really struggled on the cold tires and the handling of the
car was really loose, and had a lot of oversteer in turns one and two,
which I couldn’t dial out.” It was in those turns that the
backend of Wade’s car appeared to get very loose when he was passing
another car on lap 62. Wade responded to a question about that by
saying, “Yah, I had a lot of problems in turns 1-2. The car
clearly ran well on only one line, and when I had to move that line (to
pass a slower car) it was pretty scary.”
Passing slower traffic after restarts was another challenging
issue. “You really had to time yourself. The first time I
didn’t time it right and lost the leading group in front of me due to
having to lap the slower traffic.”
And, of course, there were the accidents – another learning experience
for Wade. On those Wade had a better view than he would have
liked. “Every accident except one was when I was directly behind
that person. I guess it was just good luck and a lot of
timing. I got by unscathed, but it was always very close!” 
Nevertheless, Wade was on the podium with winner Jon Herb and second
place Chris Festa. In attendance at the post race podium media
conference was a smiling Ron Dixon.
(Photo of Wade, with Chris Festa on the right, at media conference.)
(For more information about Wade Cunningham visit his personal web site at: www.cunninghammotorsport.com )
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