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.”
Auto racing news from the West Coast
Showing posts with label Wade Cunningham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wade Cunningham. Show all posts
Friday, May 22, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Cunningham on pole for Indy Lights Firestone Freedom 100
Wade Cunningham, driving the No. 11 entry for Sam Schmidt Motorsports, won the pole for Friday’s Firstone Freedom 100 Indy Lights race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Schmidt is a Pepperdine University graduate, former IndyCar Series driver and owner in the Indy Lights series.
Cunningham was the 19th driver to qualify in the 22-car field. Sebastian Saavedra was the pole sitter at 47.25 seconds at the time Cunningham started his qualifying run.
That’s a good time running by yourself,” Cunningham said. “We were only running marginally quicker than that this morning at 9 with the cool ambient temperatures and a cold track. So I dug deep, and the car was great. I can’t complain. The changes that were made from second practice to qualifying obviously worked. We didn’t do the quickest lap time, but we were more consistent on the second lap.”
Schmidt has three cars in the Indy Lights race. Ana Beatriz qualified fourth and James Hinchcliffe will start 12th.
Charlie Kimball, a driver from Camarillo and driver of the No. 35 entry for Palm Beach International Raceway, qualified seventh.
“We had a starter break at the qualifying line, so we had to push start it,” Kimball said. “The engine wouldn’t turn over. It was a bit tense and very frantic there for a few seconds, but we
got it fired, luckily. It wasn’t an ideal run (because) we didn’t quite get the engine as warm as we wanted before we went out. We didn’t get the setup quite right. With everyone running in practice, there was a little more rubber down than we anticipated. The wind was blowing across the car instead of at our back.
“We’re pretty happy. We have a good race car under us. We’re in good shape. We’re where we need to be to have a good result. From the front four rows, we can make anything happen. The competitive level of this series this year is higher than it’s been in a long, long time. And that lends itself to really tight races and good competition.”
Daniel Herrington, driving for Valencia’s Bryan Herta and his Bryan Herta Autosport team, qualified ninth.
“Yeah, it wasn’t bad,” said Herrington, driver of the No. 28 entrty. “We made a few more changes here before qualifying to get a little more speed out of it. So far, pretty good, but this is the worst part. You just have to sit here and wait and see if your time can hold up. But we made a few changes in the car, and that helped pick up a little bit of speed. It seemed like it did pretty well for us. Now the most important thing is to get a good race car.”
Cunningham was the 19th driver to qualify in the 22-car field. Sebastian Saavedra was the pole sitter at 47.25 seconds at the time Cunningham started his qualifying run.
That’s a good time running by yourself,” Cunningham said. “We were only running marginally quicker than that this morning at 9 with the cool ambient temperatures and a cold track. So I dug deep, and the car was great. I can’t complain. The changes that were made from second practice to qualifying obviously worked. We didn’t do the quickest lap time, but we were more consistent on the second lap.”
Schmidt has three cars in the Indy Lights race. Ana Beatriz qualified fourth and James Hinchcliffe will start 12th.
Charlie Kimball, a driver from Camarillo and driver of the No. 35 entry for Palm Beach International Raceway, qualified seventh.
“We had a starter break at the qualifying line, so we had to push start it,” Kimball said. “The engine wouldn’t turn over. It was a bit tense and very frantic there for a few seconds, but we
got it fired, luckily. It wasn’t an ideal run (because) we didn’t quite get the engine as warm as we wanted before we went out. We didn’t get the setup quite right. With everyone running in practice, there was a little more rubber down than we anticipated. The wind was blowing across the car instead of at our back.
“We’re pretty happy. We have a good race car under us. We’re in good shape. We’re where we need to be to have a good result. From the front four rows, we can make anything happen. The competitive level of this series this year is higher than it’s been in a long, long time. And that lends itself to really tight races and good competition.”
Daniel Herrington, driving for Valencia’s Bryan Herta and his Bryan Herta Autosport team, qualified ninth.
“Yeah, it wasn’t bad,” said Herrington, driver of the No. 28 entrty. “We made a few more changes here before qualifying to get a little more speed out of it. So far, pretty good, but this is the worst part. You just have to sit here and wait and see if your time can hold up. But we made a few changes in the car, and that helped pick up a little bit of speed. It seemed like it did pretty well for us. Now the most important thing is to get a good race car.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)