SURPRISE RETURN TO INDY PRO SERIES FOR CUNNINGHAM
US-based New Zealand racing driver Wade Cunningham will return to the Indy Pro Series (IPS) this year in a deal which will see him run for a team aligned to top Indy Racing League outfit Andretti Green Racing.
Former World Karting Champion Cunningham won the IPS in his rookie year in 2005 and finished a fighting third last year after missing two races due to appendicitis.
This year he planned to move up to the Indy Racing League (IRL), where he would have been competing with fellow Kiwi Scott Dixon, but with little movement in the driver ranks in that category he has brokered a deal with Andretti Green Racing and its affiliate AFS Racing to return to the IPS.
Andretti Green Racing is one of the top IRL teams having won back-to-back titles in 2004/05. This year it is running Tony Kanaan, Marco Andretti and Danica Patrick in the IRL, and - via its affiliation with Gary Peterson's AFS Racing team - Cunningham and fellow returnee Jaime Camara in the IPS.
Cunningham has been working on the details of the deal for the past month and announced it in conjunction with AFS Racing and Andretti Green Racing today.
'It's a great opportunity,' he said of the deal which will see him join 24 other top drivers in an even bigger and more competitive IPS this year. 'I've looked at this from all sorts of different angles but the bottom line is if I want to get to the IRL I have to align myself with one of the top teams and that, effectively, is what I've done and I'll be pushing hard at every race just like last year.'
AFS Racing scored its first two IPS wins last season and team boss Gary Peterson says that with Cunningham, Camara and Andretti-Green Racing on board he hopes to score many more.
'We had two major goals going into the 2007 season. The first was to keep the momentum from last season and run a very competitive team this year and the second was to align AFS with a winning IndyCar series team. So as far as I am concerned we couldn't have accomplished our goals more to my satisfaction.'
The obvious benefit for Cunningham, apart from the fact that it keeps him in the seat while he seeks an IRL drive, is that under the rules that govern the IRL and IPS, linking up with an IPS team gives the IRL team bonus test days.
'The rules only allow for AGR to earn five bonus test days, so there are no guarantees, but, ' says Cunningham, 'I'm hopeful that I'll have an opportunity,'
Florida's Homestead-Miami Speedway hosts the first round of both the IRL and IPS over the March 24-25 weekend.
