Tony Kanaan’s top 10 races – in his own words

By:

David Malsher-Lopez

Sep 7, 2020, 10:13 PM

The 2004 IndyCar champion and 2013 Indy 500 winner Tony Kanaan probably hasn’t yet driven his final IndyCar race, but we still asked him for the 10 most significant races of his career. He explained his choices to David Malsher-Lopez.

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Chip Ganassi Racing, Riley-Ford Ecoboost

Chip Ganassi’s mighty sportscar team had entered a new era the year before when it switched from BMW normally aspirated power to the smaller capacity but twin-turbo Ford Ecoboost engines, but both of CGR’s Riley Fords had retired at the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona. Then, when the combo scored its breakthrough win at the Sebring 12 Hours, it was the sister car to Kanaan’s that found its way to Victory Lane.

However, in 2015 Ganassi again asked his IndyCar aces Scott Dixon and Kanaan to drive one of his cars at Daytona for the round-the-clock classic, accompanied by the team’s NASCAR stars of the time, Kyle Larson and Jamie McMurray. This quartet prevailed after a good long battle with Action Express Racing and Spirit of Daytona Racing.

David Malsher-Lopez

David Malsher-Lopez is Motorsport.com’s U.S. editor, covering the NTT IndyCar Series and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. Since completing journalism college in 1994, he has worked for Autosport, TRMG, Motor Sport, Autosport (again) and Racer, before joining Motorsport.com in 2015… where he has found himself enjoying a third spell writing for Autosport. Over the course of those 27 years, he has served as a journalist, sub-editor, features editor, deputy editor and editor. In 2015, he also wrote Will Power’s biography. David lives with his wife Sophia in California and when not writing about racing, he will be found reading about planes and classic cars, attending airshows, listening to a wide variety of music or watching cop shows from the ’70s. He intends to one day own a grand piano, an Airedale terrier and a vintage Pontiac. He doesn’t do Facebook and doesn’t understand Instagram but can be found @DavidMalsher on Twitter.