Kanaan’s Second Is Good for First

Tony Kanaan needed to finish fourth in the Toyota Indy 400 on Sunday at California Speedway in Fontana to win the Indy Racing League championship.

Because he was starting from last place, that looked like a daunting assignment. So what was he doing on the last lap, battling Adrian Fernandez for the race victory?

“I was thinking of winning the race and the championship,” said the 29-year-old Brazilian driver.

Kanaan has finished every lap of every IRL race this season -- that’s 3,105 laps -- with the finale in two weeks at Texas Motor Speedway, where he scored one of his three victories earlier this year.

“Kim was saying to me before the race, ‘You need to win the championship,’ ” Kanaan said of Kim Green, one of the three owners of Andretti Green Racing. “I was thinking, ‘If you win the race, you win the championship.’ So I was there to win the race.”

Kanaan said he drove the last lap (a restart after a caution period) inside, and Fernandez drove outside and beat him at the finish line. “He was stronger,” Kanaan added.

The second-place finish was worth 40 points to Kanaan, boosting his total to an insurmountable 578. Teammate Dan Wheldon, who finished third, is second in the standings with 498 points and is 25 ahead of Indianapolis 500 winner Buddy Rice.

“Now our job is to get Dan second in the championship,” Kanaan said, echoing the teamwork theme espoused by the owners, Green, Michael Andretti and Kevin Savoree, and proclaimed in a three-way doughnut-making session on the back straight right after the race by Kanaan, Wheldon and teammate Dario Franchitti.

“With everybody’s help,” Kanaan said, “I don’t think I won, I think we won.”

Wheldon appeared every bit as happy with Kanaan’s championship as Kanaan. When the doughnut making was over, Wheldon slid his car next to Kanaan’s, jumped from his cockpit to the top of Kanaan’s car and smothered the emerging Kanaan in a bear hug as they danced around. Kanaan’s car may never be the same.

“The best moment of my life was after I crossed the finish line and we ... did doughnuts,” Kanaan said. “That tells you how happy everybody was.”

Intoned Wheldon as Kanaan entered the interview room, “We have a champion in the house.”

“Dan looks happier than me,” Kanaan replied. “I think I haven’t realized yet. It was such a long weekend for us.”

It certainly started out that way. Kanaan’s car came down with an unspecified engine illness just before qualifying Saturday and he was unable to qualify, which put him at the end of the field, 21st, for the start of Sunday’s race. Once the green flag flew, though, Kanaan put his Dallara-Honda in the thick of things. He passed six cars on the first lap and was running 10th after the second. He ran among the leaders most of the race and led it three times.

Quipped Andretti: “The only thing that let me down was, I told him to go out for the win and he didn’t get that. We’ll let that go.”

More seriously, he added: “It was just a dream day, really. It was a tough weekend. We didn’t qualify. The guys weren’t really happy with the car until the end. That’s the beauty of this team: You don’t give up, just keep working on it.

“After the warmup, the guys, I could see they were a little more comfortable. I thought, ‘We might be a little better off than we thought.’ Then the race started and I think Tony pretty much showed that he had a fast car right away.”

Even Kanaan was impressed by his quick move forward.

“Well, it definitely tastes better,” he said coming from last. “If you give me the option, I wouldn’t start last. But as circumstances went, we had to, and we proved again that we have a strong team. We can start wherever the situation leads us and we can make our way through.”

And there was lots of way-making late in the race, when what had been, basically, an orderly exercise in speed deteriorated into a demolition derby.

Coming off a caution period for debris on the track on Lap 179 of 200, Kanaan used an outside move to pass longtime leader Helio Castroneves just as A.J. Foyt IV was sliding up the track and brushing the wall, bringing out the yellow flag again.

Kanaan kept the lead through that restart but Alex Barron spun and hit the wall in Turn 2 only five laps later, and on the restart after that, Fernandez, riding third, got the jump on Kanaan and Castroneves and moved ahead.

Had that been the end of the crashing, Kanaan might have been able to mount another challenge for the lead. With only six laps to go, though, Czech driver Tomas Enge got sideways and was T-boned by Tomas Scheckter. Neither driver was hurt, but the accident made a major mess on the track and only quick work by the safety crew made it possible for the last-lap shootout. And for that, Kanaan was just a tiny bit too slow.

Still, the championship was his, and his team’s, and Green offered a cautionary thought to the rest of the IRL.

“This team has done a great job this year,” he said. “We’ve already started reflecting on our shortcomings, going forward. We can improve. We will improve.”