Cunningham moves to third in Indy Lights series

New Zealand driver Wade Cunningham has moved into third place in the Indy Lights championship points standings after finishing second in the seventh race of the series in Iowa today (NZT).

The 24-year-old is now just 22 points shy of early season leader JR Hildebrand.

Cunningham qualified and finished second at the Iowa Speedway, joining winner Ana Beatriz and third-placed James Hinchcliffe in a Sam Schmidt Motorsport trifecta.

The 115-lap race round the 1.5km oval very much belonged to Cunningham, who led 103 of the 115 laps until he was passed by Beatriz on lap 106.

The New Zealander had let Colombian driver Sebastian Saavedra, who was 20 laps down after problems at the start of the race, past three laps earlier.

However Saavedra inexplicably slowed immediately after passing Cunningham, allowing Beatriz to bridge the 1.6 second lead her teammate had had on her for the vast majority of the race.

"Bar shunting someone off the track, it's probably the most unsportsmanlike thing he could have done," said Cunningham after the race. "Ana was 1.6 seconds back but to give you an idea of how much he slowed down she was able to catch me in just three laps."

Compounding the problem was the fact that the leading bunch were threading their way through a bunch of back markers at the time, making it doubly hard for Cunningham to launch a last-minute counter-attack on Beatriz.

" Points-wise we're exactly where we wanted to be which, obviously, is good, but really, without wanting to take anything away from Ana there was absolutely no joy for me standing on the second step of the podium today," Cunningham said.

Whatever his reasoning for slowing, it didn't do Saavedra any good as Cunningham leap-frogged him in the points from fourth to third.

Long-time series points leader JR Hildebrand (USA) continues to lead the standings with 227 points, 16 more than Mario Romancini - who finished fourth at Iowa - and 22 more than Cunningham.

The eighth round of the series will be contested on the permanent Watkins Glen circuit in upstate New York on July 4 and the ninth on a new downtown street course in Toronto the weekend after.