Cunningham wins Freedom 100 Indy Lights race

Wade Cunningham, driving a car for Sam Schmidt Motorsports, won the Firestone Freedom 100 Indy Lights race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Friday.
Cunningham won the pole and led 14 laps, including the last two, of the 40-lap race around the 2.5-mile oval.
“The whole race was to and fro,” Cunnigham said. “I got to the front early and knew I couldn’t lead all 40 laps, so I fell back because I didn’t want to be leading at the end. I knew I had a fast
car, and it was a matter of being at the right place at the right time.”
Sam Schmidt is a Pepperdine University graduate, former IndyCar Series driver and owner of a three-car team in the Indy Lights series.
Daniel Herrington, driving a car for Valencia’s Bryan Herta and his Bryan Herta Autosport team, was seventh. He was one of 11 drivers in the 22-car field to finish on the lead lap.
“It was a very difficult race for us, actually,” Herrington said. “For whatever reason, we started the race off with a lot of understeer, and it never went away. We tried chasing it the whole time, and really we were just out there trying to hang on and wait for other people to screw up, which luckily some of them did. We came home in seventh place, which isn’t too bad, so we’ll get our points and get out of here and try and get ready to win some of these races.”
Camraillo’s Charlie Kimball, driving a car for the Palm Beach International Raceway team, was 13th, completing on 31 laps after making contact with Mike Potekhen during the race.
“I just went into Turn 3, on the low side of Potekhen, I think it was, and running through the spotter was calling high, high, and I was down on the white line holding it as low as I could and just kept chopping, chopping lower and lower and lower and then finally hit my right front,” Kimball said. “He spun across to the inside, and I just barely kept it off the wall. The right front toe-link was bent. So it’s day done. It was kind of crazy driving with like eight to go or something. It was dumb for him to come down that hard. I was as low as I could get on the white line or below it and he just kept coming on me. Too aggressive, I think.”