‘It’s going to hurt until you win one’: Tony Kanaan on emotions for Arrow McLaren in 500 loss
INDIANAPOLIS – Tony Kanaan’s voice is battered. Beaten. Labored. The kind of raspy, low, guttural tone that comes in defeat.
In so many ways, Arrow McLaren’s sporting director has been here countless times before, and yet, Kanaan admits, those impossible final three minutes as your driver trades the lead back-and-forth in a high-speed chess match with an oval track wizard, and all you can do is watch, listen and pray?
“I was a nervous mess,” Kanaan told IndyStar Sunday evening aboard his motorhome, as the 49-year-old oscillated between rubbing his fingers through his 5-oclock shadow and his not-nearly-clean-shaven head. “Man those last five laps…”
Kanaan finds himself at a loss for words, briefly.
“I guess it’s part of being a rookie in this role. It’s different.”
The newness for Kanaan is this: his fiery Brazilian passion still burns like a furnace — hot, steady and unceasing. And yet, the newly-retired IndyCar driver cannot quench his competitive thirst through action and execution on-track. He is but a teacher, a mentor and perhaps for the next couple days, a lifeline for his inconsolable young Mexican phenom of a driver who for three years running has put himself in position with 10 laps to go in the Indianapolis 500. And three times – each one different and uniquely painful – Pato O’Ward has been forced by this living, breathing ‘being’ they say chooses its winner each year to try and look on to the next edition of this race, instead of getting a chance to celebrate and bask in his achievements.
To have merely survived Sunday, after the mental game of a four-hour delay and the flurry of early crashes and engine failures that sidelined 10 cars by race’s end, is a testament of one’s focus, preparation and mettle. To have contended over the closing five laps, in a way only one other car did, is all one can ever really ask for.
“I know it hurts, and I told him what I’ve gone through, and I know it doesn’t justify or change anything, but I think it’s good to hear it from somebody who’s gone through it,” Kanaan said Sunday evening. “That’s gotta be easier than someone else who says, ‘Oh, you did a great job.’
“But it’s going to haunt him and hurt him until he wins one.”
And Kanaan knows that because he lived it.
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After crashing out in 28th as a 500 rookie in 2002, Kanaan started inside the front two each of his first eight visits to the Racing Capital of the World. Three times he finished in the top-5. Twice he finished on the podium, and one time he settled for runner-up. That race – the 2004 500 that Kanaan can play ‘what if’ about 20 years later – still stings.
Last year’s letdown for Kanaan and Arrow McLaren was a defeat unlike Sunday. It was one of unforced errors, combined with the feeling multiple times over the closing 30 laps victory was theirs – first with Felix Rosenqvist, and then with O’Ward. The sting and disdain of regret were the theme of that loss to Team Penske and Josef Newgarden in 2023. This year, Kanaan said, in so many ways – namely execution across the 200 laps Sunday – O’Ward and Arrow McLaren were Newgarden and Penske’s equals And in some ways, too – namely speed – Arrow McLaren was a step behind.
Feeling like you’ve done your best, and that for whatever reason that wasn’t good enough can be freeing in a way, Kanaan said. But when that nearly flawless performance comes up against the series’ black hat of a race team and its poster boy, Kanaan couldn’t admit that the result didn’t strike a nerve.
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“I think they did a good job,” Kanaan said of Penske’s throttling of the field this May. “It hurts, but I hate sore losers. What they did (Team Penske’s push-to-pass scandal) doesn’t justify the other part, in my opinion. I think they’ve done a great job here, and they did their homework. They came prepared.
“Now, their actions prior to this I have condemned. I don’t believe a single word (Newgarden) said said, but that doesn’t mean I’m trying to take away anything. You separate the two things. One thing is what we know happened, and the other is that Josef’s still a great racecar driver – one of the best out there. Still, do I believe a single word he said up until today? No, but that’s the past. That’s behind us. Is it harder for me to swallow a loss like that to them? Ehh, probably, because of my opinion of the way they’ve been acting, but this race his nothing to do with any of that.”
Of Newgarden’s last-lap pass for the win coming into Turn 3, having just been passed by O’Ward crossing the Yard of Bricks, Kanaan said he wasn’t so much surprised – it was no secret Team Penske carried an edge on raw speed over the whole field this month – as he was content in the way O’Ward’s roll of the dice fell.
“I wouldn’t have done anything different. Pato had to pass him there. He wasn’t going to pass on the back-straight,” Kanaan said. “Josef was just stronger. I wasn’t surprised, but I was just hoping he might be able to create a little bit bigger of a gap into Turn 1, but Josef was so tough the whole month.”
And so there is solace, for Arrow McLaren’s grizzled IndyCar veteran at least, stepping away from Sunday. Coming home gutted at 2nd and 4th place, along with a resoundingly great debut (minus one pitstop approach) from the team’s high-profile rookie is more than any team can say. Of the four teams that ran at least four cars all month, Arrow McLaren was the most consistent. Even though Sunday didn’t end with a milk-soaked firesuit for O’Ward and company, Kanaan said there’s no reason this should hurt any more than the rest.
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They hurt, he said when you don’t win, and that can only be one team and one driver. And they hurt even a little bit more when you walk away feeling as if you left something on the table. After a series of years in which O’Ward perhaps tried too little on the closing lap against eventual 500 winner Marcus Ericsson, in order to preserve his regular season title hopes, in 2022, before one might argue that he wanted last year’s win too much, when he helped engineer a crash with eight laps merely for 2nd place, the young Arrow McLaren driver seemingly threaded the needle just how you’d want
‘Welcome to Indy’ Kanaan said with a sarcastic laugh.
“Outsiders will tell you this one should hurt the most, but it should actually hurt the least, because we were there,” he continued. “The circumstances of last year hurt a lot, because we weren’t in there to fight at the end, and so I don’t take it that, ‘Oh this one hurts so much,’ because all of them hurt. It’s the nature of this race.
“I’ve been around way too long and had so many times where this place has hurt me. Really, it’s every year we didn’t win, and you’re always left saying, ‘Oh, that one hurt.’”
The unfortunate truth, Kanaaan said from his own experience, is that Monday will be gutting. “You’re going to wake up tomorrow wishing it was today,” Kanaan said Sunday evening. “And then you’re going to wake up Tuesday pissed off because you had to go to the banquet and relive it all.
“We walked into engineering post-race, and there’s freaking TVs that keep playing (the end of Sunday’s race) and I just turned it off. I couldn’t watch it. And I said to him, ‘I’m not going to lie to you; it’s going to hurt, and it’s going to hurt until you win one. But I’ve also always used my bad results to make me stronger.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Tony Kanaan reflects on own Indy 500 near-misses after Pato O'Ward's close call
