New Zealand driver Wade Cunningham kept his Indy Pro Series title defence alive when he won the Freedom 100 at Indianapolis.
Starting from pole, Cunningham led the 40-lap, 100-mile (161km) race in the same meeting in which Auckland's Scott Dixon finished sixth in the feature Indianapolis 500 yesterday.
Cunningham led throughout, taking the chequered flag 0.6889s ahead of fellow front-row starter Jay Howard and setting a race average speed record of 295.48km/h - 18.50km faster than the existing Pro Series mark.
Cunningham, 21, has won some big races before - claiming the world karting championship in 2003 and the Menards Infiniti Pro Series.
He revealed that for the last 15 laps yesterday he was struggling with a gearbox problem.
"For the first 25 laps, the car was fine. I was able to build a lead of maybe a quarter of the length of the front straight.
"Then with about 15 laps to go I started having trouble changing between fifth and sixth," he said. "Towards the end I couldn't even use fifth so I had to use sixth instead, which is not ideal, and [Jay] Howard caught up. I kept pushing though. And while he did get past me a couple of times, he never led a lap.
"It got very close - particularly on the last lap, when I nearly missed the entry to turn one and he got under me, but I got back into the draft down the back straight and drove round the outside of him on turn three and carried the momentum to the flag."
Cunningham crossed the finish to the cheers of a 100,000 crowd and said he felt a mixture of elation and relief: elation at winning the biggest Indy Pro Series race of the year - relief that the car held together long enough to get him to the line.
He was surprised when he was surrounded by some Kiwis among the well-wishers. "There were people everywhere and everyone wanted to come up and say 'Good on ya'!"
There is no better place to impress Indy Racing League racing bosses - or fans - than at Indianapolis.
The win meant that Cunningham can now secure a second Indy Pro Series title before moving up to the Indy Racing League.
At the first round of this year's championship he was given a time penalty for allegedly jumping the start, and he was forced to miss the double-header second and third rounds when he had to have an emergency appendix operation.
Rounding out a fantastic start for the New Zealand contingent at the Indianapolis 500 meeting, Christchurch 23-year-old Matthew Hamilton finished his first Freedom 100 race in 13th position, still on the lead lap, after an incident-fee run.
Hamilton struggled with set-up during practice and qualifying but found some direction in the final practice session and ran as high as seventh before slowly slipping back to 13th as his car's balance went off.
- NZPA
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