Tony Kanaan is on the brink of his final Indy 500 appearance, and he has given himself a proper shot at winning it all by qualifying ninth last weekend. He hailed it as one of his best qualifying efforts at “the Brickyard”.
Clearly a lot of attention went into the fact that it was his last qualifying, and that it will be his last Indianapolis 500, but the Brazilian already knew he will be happy and grateful when the race ends next Sunday.
“Obviously only one person is going to be happy on Sunday; that’s a fact. But I can say this year, two people will be happy on Sunday, and that will be me.”
When he announed his retirement last February, Kanaan told an anecdote of how he arrived in Columbus, Ohio, with a piece of paper containing a few English sentences written by Rubens Barrichello.
Asked by Pit Debrief if he had any words of advice for that young and very green 22 year old, his first response was quite witty:
“You should have learned English before you came to America, Tony Kanaan, because it was really hard. So I should have paid more attention at my English classes that I didn’t care when I was young. That is for sure.”
He then expanded on his initial response, giving a very reflective answer:
“You know, I got asked a lot of the same question, what I would tell my young self or what would I change. I wouldn’t change a thing. I think everything that I went through was valid. It wasn’t fun at times, but looking back, even the mistakes were a learning curve, as much as I hate them, and choices that I made felt right and then ended up being wrong, but because of that bad choice, led to a good choice later on. Then all of a sudden you look back and you go, I wouldn’t change anything.
“What I would tell my younger self is just trust your gut and do whatever is best for you. It’s really easy when you’re young and you don’t have a lot of support, and without my dad being around you don’t have a lot of people you can ask an opinion that is going to give you an honest one.”
Despite the challenges he has faced during his career, Kanaan wouldn’t change a thing, even though help and advice is easily gotten by these days.
“A lot of people would approach you with, well, let me manage you, and they’d be thinking, well, how can I make money out of it, and those decisions sometimes are not the right ones. It’s just because people were thinking financially what would be beneficial to them.
“I was fortunate enough,” he continued. “I was lost at times. I made my own decisions a lot of the times, but even when I had somebody helping — nowadays it’s really easy. Everybody has an opinion on it. We put something on social media, we’ll get a thousand replies with a thousand bloody answers of what you should be doing.
“But at the end of the day, the people around me, I always said, you’re not going to make a decision for me. Even if you think it’s wrong, I respect your decision, but I’ll do it my way. That’s pretty much — I still do this today.”
And “his way” has put him on the third row for the race next weekend.
After his final qualifying attempt on Saturday, where he put the car into the Fast 12 session on Sunday, he entered the engineering room in his underwear, following a bet on his qualifying position.
“Before I left for qualifying, for my last attempt on Saturday, I was in the engineering room on Saturday, and I said, if I put it in the top 12 I’m going to walk back here in my underwear only.”
And he subsequently did, to the delight of the engineering crew who “went bananas”. Knowing McLaren CEO Zak Brown is also a betting man, Pit Debrief asked what the one-time Indy 500-winner would get if he was to repeat his victory 10 years on. Surprisingly, this wasn’t yet discussed.
“That is a really good point. I am going to have dinner with Zak on Thursday, and the only thing I want from Zak, apart from giving me the best ride for the 500 on my final one, is if I win, he’s going to let me drive the Senna McLaren car at the next event that McLaren does.”
