A FIGHTER AND A PEOPLE’S CHAMPION KANAAN
“I tell you, it’s been a crazy-busy last couple of days,” chuckles Tony Kanaan on the Tuesday after his ‘final’ IndyCar race. “All of a sudden people want to talk to me, just as I said I was gonna slow down. There will be opportunities, I know, but what they’ll be I don’t know.
“Truthfully, when I made my announcement in February, I expected this year to be all the ovals, and then next year probably just the Indy 500. But because of how strange this year has been, without fans at most tracks, I want to do all the ovals again next year. And if the right opportunity comes up then for sure, that’s what I will try to do. But as I said about a thousand times over the weekend in Gateway, it doesn’t matter what I want. What I want is not going to control what happens.
“We have to be realistic. I need to find a sponsor and a team, and so I need to get talking to partners I’ve been with for ages like Bryant and 7-Eleven and Big Machine, and see if we can go put something together for the five ovals, or just Indy and another couple of races, or just Indy… And the uncertainty in the world right now makes it even more difficult, because no one is sure what kind of budget they might have. The timing is… not good.”
Ex-team-mates and friends of Kanaan are far more positive about his prospects than he is, the consensus being that the double-header at Gateway on the last weekend of August, which included an encouraging ninth and a dispiriting 19th, were not TK’s final IndyCar races.
“Let me go on record as saying I don’t believe Tony’s written his last chapter in open-wheel, the whole ‘#TKLastLap’ thing notwithstanding,” says Bryan Herta, whose first connection with Kanaan came in 2000 when he subbed for the injured Brazilian at Mo Nunn Racing for three CART Indycar races. Three years later, they became team-mates for four seasons at what was then called Andretti Green Racing in the Indy Racing League; by default, Herta took on the professorial role in the Gang of Four that comprised himself, Kanaan, Dario Franchitti and Dan Wheldon.
“He really captured the fans’ imagination and rose to become one of the most popular drivers in US open-wheel for the last 25 years,” continues
