One in a series looking at the Firestone Indy Lights title contenders

Whether he holds the Firehawk Cup in October as the Firestone Indy Lights champion or not, Jack Hawksworth will point to this racing season as his most challenging and educational.

The 21-year-old native of Bradford, England, is fourth in the series title chase though only 11 points separate the contenders with two races remaining.

The first – on a 1.683-mile, 10-turn street circuit in Houston – plays to his strength. Hawksworth has won three of the four street course races on the calendar. The latter – on the 2-mile Auto Club Speedway oval – is a wild card for the 2012 Pro Mazda Championship titlist. He posted a pair of top-five finishes in the four consecutive oval races.

“Coming off the back of such a dominant season last year and having won the Indy Lights opener and finish second in the second race you start on the front row every time and suddenly not getting pole positions and winning races, it’s hard to take and character-building,” he said. “I know that the tough times will make you stronger. Even when things weren’t right, we kept on digging and working hard.”

Sage Karam of Schmidt Peterson Motorsports holds the top spot in the standings, with Carlos Munoz of Andretti Autosport two points behind and Gabby Chaves of Schmidt Peterson Motorsports another two points back. Each has won at least one race, with Hawksworth the most recent victor at Baltimore.

“It’s an interesting dynamic in the championship this year; a lot of up and downs for everybody,” Hawksworth noted. “As a season as a whole it’s been one of the craziest seasons for me, starting off leading the points championship for the first two races and then sort of everything falling to pieces in the middle of the season. I think we were 60-odd points behind at one point.

“The ovals didn’t go well for me at all. We came back stronger, faster the past three races (two wins and third place). It was a difficult stretch, but fortunately I have good people around me and as long as you can keep your head up and keeping working it will turn around and that’s exactly what’s happened for us this year.

“Now the momentum is looking our way while some of the other guys in the championship are struggling. We’re in a great position now and time to go out and finish what we started back at St. Petersburg. Now it’s back in our hands and we have the opportunity to go out and win this thing.

“We don’t have to rely on others having bad days, we have to go out and do it ourselves. I don’t see why things won’t continue to go well at Houston. We understand what we have to do to execute to win at Houston and then we have to go to Fontana and do something that we’ve only done at Iowa (third place) and perform on the oval.

“We’re in the position to do that. We know why we struggled on the ovals. We’ll be right there and surprise some people at Fontana to clinch it.”