Cunningham Fourth at Chicagoland

He qualified third quickest, leading 39 of the 67 laps and crossing the line as part of a lead group of six cars in fourth place.

It could easily have been third place too had not the hard-driving young Kiwi put everything he had in trying to get the lead back.

"It was definitely all or nothing on the last lap," he confirmed."The battle was for points and it was between James (Davison ) and I so it was about beating him, not whether I finished third or fourth. I'm disappointed, obviously, that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't find a way past James, but, on the other hand, it was a really good race so one place is not worth getting too out of shape about."

The race started well for Cunningham, the 25-year-old Aucklander, this year driving the # 11 Lucas Oils car for the Sam Schmidt Motorsports team, in the lead by the end of the first lap then spending the first half defending it from Australian driver James Davison and American Mike Potekhen.

Both drivers edged past for a lap at a time but neither could make a move stick on the New Zealander.

The complexion of the race changed however on the 32nd lap when Potekhen spun off the track at high speed, taking the following Ana Beatriz and James Hinchcliffe with him.

It took eight laps to clear the track and when the Safety Car finally went in Cunningham was jumped by eventual race winner Daniel Herrington and Davison.

Try and he might a strong head wind meant that Cunningham couldn't make a retaliatory move on either stick, despite experimenting with both high and low lines and slipping back to fifth to try and use the combined draft from championship points leader JR Hildebrand (who had a fuel problem in qualifying and started the race from P13 on the grid), and Colombian Sebastian Saavedra.

He was able to edge back past Saavedra and Hildebrand as the laps ran out, but while he was doing that Andrew Prendeville followed suit, then grabbed third place from Cunningham as the chequered flag was being unfurled.

"With the wind as it was," Cunningham explained, " it was always going to be hard for me, both because of the way we had geared the car, and the fact that Daniel and James were working so well together. I tried but as I found out I was never going to be able to get round the outside unless I could box James in and force him to lift. When I was in front the gearing was perfect for running on the low line but with Daniel in the lead and James running half a car length up on him I kept hitting the (rev) limiter when I tried running round them on the high line. If we hadn't had the yellow flag in the middle of the race I would have been OK, but with the wind the way it was I was a sitting duck when the Safety Car went in and from that point on I was at more of a disadvantage than an advantage, particularly without a teammate to work with."

Points-wise the result was that while JR Hildebrand retained his lead in the championship points standings, Davison finally leap-frogging Saavedra for second and Cunningham wrestling back fourth from James Hinchcliffe with just one round of the 2009 series to go, in five week's time at the Homestead oval in Florida.

Source: www.nzracer.com