KANAAN: Things Will Get Better

IndyCar

KANAAN: Things Will Get Better

Hi guys. Sorry for taking some time away from my column, but if you saw my crash at Indy and how the next few races went...

Tony Kanaan | http://www.TonyKanaan.com.br | Posted June 27, 2009 Richmond, VA

After three horrible races in the past month, Kanaan's Andretti-Green team continue to work flat-out to improve their fortunes. (LAT)

Hi guys. Sorry for taking some time away from my column, but if you saw my crash at Indy and how the next few races went, I’ve been a guy with a lot of healing to do!

It’s been three eventful weeks. I haven't had the best four races of my life lately but I guess I'm spoiled over the past years with such good consistency. And now two mechanical failures, a human failure of mine, and it's pretty hard to take it. We went from first to seventh in the championship pretty quickly, but we just have to keep going.

Family is my biggest support. I get closer to them this way because it's more difficult and everybody's pretty tired by the time you do four races in a row. It's so tiring for everybody and when those races don’t go well, everyone needs an outlet to breathe and relax.

There are some people that work with me like my manager Kika that I think I have a tendency to probably offload a little bit my frustration sometimes because they're really close to me. We work directly together and sometimes it's tough to keep it positive all the time. But with my son, he is my escape. He's living in Brazil right now. So I flew back to Brazil on the weekend that we had off and I spent five wonderful days just with him, not thinking about racing.

This is the thing that people have to understand, the bad results are consequences of certain circumstances, right? You have three bad races, and some people think, “Oh my God, what's happening? We need to regroup, we need to regroup.” We don't have to do anything different because those crashes and (parts) failures are circumstances that happen in life. There’s no mystery to solve, you know?

And when you're doing that sometimes people try to sit down and say, “What do I need to do to change things immediately?” And you can think about it 24/7 if you let yourself, and that's really bad. For example, I’ve won races that came really easily. And then there were races that I gave everything I had and I ended up not even finishing.

So what I'm trying to say is we are trying all the time to win. Everyone at Andretti-Green is giving 100 percent. Sometimes that 100 percent effort results in a win. Sometimes you get a crash. Anyone that says “they need to work harder” doesn’t understand that’s what we’ve been doing the whole time.

For me, spending time with my kid back home, it's better because I don't have to think about racing when I’m with him. With so many races run back-to-back, it’s the perfect way for me to recharge and go back and do another race, and then another…

I don’t talk a lot about being a dad because that’s a very different part of my life than what people see for me at the race track, but my son Leonardo is an incredible joy for me. Getting away from my “day job” to become dad is a big motivation for me. It’s the same for a lot of people in IndyCar. Everyone goes like hell for their job then goes home to the comfort of their kids and families.

Leonardo is almost two right now so there's a lot of teaching going on when I'm around. Just teaching words like please and thank you because he doesn't put full sentences together yet. It's funny because the kid looks at me and he smiles already. So I know he sees me and thinks, “Oh, the clown is back.”

We play a lot – I think that’s very important. Teaching builds the mind but playing builds personality and character, I believe. I throw him up in the air, I get down on the floor with him, we do push-ups, we roll around. We threw stuff, we make paper airplanes and toss them out of the window. He knows that fun is always close when we’re together.

I'm fairly young and in good shape and I play with him for hours with the same energy that he has. We go to this playground that they have in Brazil for kids. So you pay, you get in and you can play for the whole day and I'm there doing everything with him. We go up, we go down, we go play with the slot cars and then we go painting and then I’ll let him paint my face. All of this is what they call “a father’s joy.”

Tony's son Leonardo has been the 2004 Series champion's retreat when Kanaan's had time to get back to Brazil between IndyCar rounds. (Tony Kanaan)

He knows I race cars, he keeps saying that daddy's car is a rocket, that I’m going to win the race, and so on. Obviously, people don't realize how much we have to jeopardize our personal lives to do what we do. And I see my son once a month for five or six days max, and that's the same with Lance Armstrong, that's the same with all the top athletes because we don't have the time to be home like regular dads. So when I’m with him, he knows we will fill our time together.

But I'm not part of his life every day. I do talk to him every day, I do see him on the web camera everyday, but I'm not there on a daily basis. I don’t know if everyone can associate with that, but for those that can, you know how hard it is on your heart.

Now that I’m back from Brazil and here in Richmond, I’m excited to try and put the past races behind us. A run at the championship have become harder and I'm going to be realistic about my chances. We have had about as many problems as you can have in an entire season and still hope to win the title. We have used up all our bad luck we can get, and I’m going to do everything I can to come back on the championship.

I know it's going to be hard, but I'm a fighter. Everybody who knows me knows that every time I’m in that that race car I'm ready to go. And I'm here for a win. And before I think about a championship I would say right now we need to think about finishing races and then start winning races. That’s how I’m going to start bringing myself back.

~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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