KANAAN: Leaving Kansas Bound For Indy

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KANAAN: Leaving Kansas Bound For Indy

You should see the way my hair looks right now, it's crazy. I look horrible already. In the “glamorous” life of a racing driver, I guess it's not all about the beauty…

Tony Kanaan | http://www.TonyKanaan.com.br | Posted May 06, 2009 Indianapolis, IN

A growing head of hair and a proper head of steam after a 3rd place at Kansas have Tony Kanaan ready to tackle the Month of May. (LAT)

You should see the way my hair looks right now, it's crazy. I look horrible already. In the “glamorous” life of a racing driver, I guess it's not all about the beauty, thankfully…

We’ve had a pretty consistent year so far, and Kansas was another good run for my 7-Eleven team. I've always started a championship with a championship mindset because especially after you win one, it doesn't matter if you win 10 races, if you don’t bring home a championship, those wins are for nothing. For me, it's what you’ve got to do.

And Kansas actually, we qualified a lot less impressively that we wanted to, but because we had so many cars to pass, it made us look better in the race. The weather made things more exciting than you want on an oval. I don't remember a race weekend on an oval where I was so concerned about conditions! It was so unpredictable from qualifying to the last lap of the race.

In a nutshell, I thought I had a car to finish in the top three. Because of the conditions I overreacted in the set up a bit so I knew from the start of the race that it was going to be really difficult for me to win the race because of the amount of downforce I had.

One good thing in Kansas was that we had a warm up in the morning, so I used that to judge how I was going to come up to speed, and to see how my tires were going to react in a cold tires situation. I practiced a restart during the warm-up, and went high on the outside to see if it was going to stick. Those are the kinds of things you do if you're experienced. It was tougher on the high line, but that's where I had the biggest advantage. When you can make moves like that, that's when people say, “How did you pull that start? How did you pass 12 cars in one lap?”

That's how I moved up with the cars being so close in performance, and if f you look at the last restart, none of the top five cars could pass anybody. We were all following each other because we're so close. You're talking about huge speeds on a super speedway but if you look at the actual lap time, it was 1/10th between the top seven guys, which is just crazy.

It seems many people did not like the race at Kansas -- obviously we’re used to seeing the Indy cars racing side-by-side for 200 laps on tracks like this, but weather conditions didn't allow us to do that on the weekend. It wasn't a boring race for me because it was so bloody difficult, but I have to say, from a fan standpoint, yes, you didn't see a lot of passing. You also didn't see cars running side-by-side all the time.

Those were the characteristics of super speedways that we had in the past that we kind of went away from a little bit. The new rules also influence how close we can run together, and how easy it is to pass. But there's two ways to look at it. You can say it's safer this way, but it's boring. The other way, you can see lot more racing and a lot more fun for the fans, but it's a lot more dangerous for us.

But I would say if I had to choose, I would go back to the side-by-side. It's not up to me to make those changes, but I think from a fan’s standpoint, side-by-side would be much better than just watching us follow each other all the time.

So now we’ve seen with our team that we’re consistent – that part is working. I don't think we’re the strongest we can be yet, but we’re consistent with top-5s and that's a good start. Now that we have the consistency we have to go to the next step. It's like a checklist; you mark off one thing at a time.

We have the consistency, "check", now let's go for race wins. And, obviously, it's Indy time, and coincidence or not, I think that's how were working – working to make the next "check" on the list. If we keep putting four cars in the top 10 every weekend, and especially at Indy, that's four out of the six cars with a chance to win. I like those odds.

Kanaan's even more motivated to win the 500. "We have to do something about Dario's 'Bozo the Clown' hair," says TK. (LAT)

With leading the drivers championship now, momentum is another thing I get asked about, and really, I think it's all in the head. I've had great momentum going into Indy, and I’ve had all these awful times going into Indy, and nothing has changed. I’ve led every time I was there, and something always happens. But I don't get hung up on these kinds of things.

If you feel you’re having good momentum, take advantage of it; if you're having a bad one, make sure you change it. That's how I see it. So it's great to lead the championship but it's just the third race of the year, and I’m only leading by one point. I could be bragging about that but I'm not – it’s just one point, my friends!

I'm focusing on the championship and the 500. I can’t get excited or depressed by having a good or bad race.

Indy 500 practice is just about to start, and from today forward, I will have no time to do anything besides talk about racing or drive a race car. I'm going to have tires for breakfast, engines for lunch, and chassis for dinner.

Well, it’s time for me to go now. I know I’ll see a lot of you this month at Indy – I hope you’ll recognize me. I haven't had the long hair in a long while. Nine years, actually.

I guess I’ll have to change my signature too.

It’s “Afro TK” from now on.

~Tony

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, SPEED, FOX, or NewsCorp.

Tony Kanaan drives the 7-Eleven Dallara-Honda for Andretti-Green Racing in the Indy Racing League. A native of Salvador, Brazil, Kanaan landed in America in 1996, claiming the Firestone Indy Lights championship in 1997. Graduating to CART in 1998 would deliver Tony 'Rookie of the Year' honors, and his first win would come at Michigan in 1999.

Kanaan earned the 2004 Indycar Series championship, recording 15 consecutive top-five finishes, including three wins and six second-place finishes. An accomplished triathlete, he also enjoys bicycling, go-karting and watersports. He speaks English, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish. Learn more about Tony at www.TonyKanaan.com.br

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tony Kanaan

TonyKanaan.com.br

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