Crazy record to be set today

A crazy record will be set today, when the season finale in the Verizon Indycar Series is run at the Sonoma track in California.

The record doesn’t have anything specific to do with the series or the track itself, but with one of the veterans behind the wheel.

Antoine Rizkallah Kanaan Filho – or just known as Tony Kanaan, will be posting an amazing record, when he (hopefully) takes the green flag, at the start of the race.

It will be his Champcar/Indycar race number 300 – in a row! It will be his race number 360 in total since 1998.

The former record was Jimmy Vasser with 212 starts in a row, and Kanaan already passed that one more than 5 years ago.

But it’s always something special, when you pass a nice even number like 300.

Of the 359 Indycar races that he has competed in until today, he has seen the chequered flag in 285 of them, and officially lead one or more laps in 122 of them.

Tony Kanaan
Photo: JJ Media

Tony Kanaan has 17 wins throughout the years, but we have to go all the way back to 2014, to find his latest victory. The year before that, he took the greatest win of his career, being the Indianapolis 500, driving for KV Racing.

He has taken 15 Pole Positions over the years, but hasn’t done so since 2011.

The Brazilian is currently driving for A. J. Foyt Enterprises, so it’s unlikely that he will add to the wins or podiums in the race today. He won the race in Sonoma back in 2005, when he drove for Andretti Autosport.

He has been racing for 7 teams since his Champcar debut in 1998. He started out with Tasman Motorspots, before having a season at Forsythe Racing. Those were followed by 3 seasons with Mo Nunn Racing, before 8 seasons at Andretti Autosports, with whom he won his only Championship Title so far, in 2004. After 3 season at KV Racing, he went on to four seasons at Chip Ganassi Racing, where he never really became a match for Scott Dixon.

Tony Kanaan, Indy 500 2013
Photo: Indycar.com / Shawn Gritzmacher

He signed for A. J. Foyt Enterprises for the 2018 and 2019 seasons. What will happen after that, we have to see. He probably has to pull his belts a bit tigher, if he wants to keep racing Indycar in 2020. Fact is that his rookie teammate Matheus Leist is just two positions behind him in the Championship Standings. To Kanaans defence, he has been plagued by technical gremlins many times this years, so it hasn’t always been him lacking pace.

Other than his Indycar career, he has had a few starts in the sportscar world. He has had 6 starts at the Daytona 24 Hours so far, including an overall win with Chip Ganassi Racing in 2015. He has stayed in contact with CGR as third driver for their Le Mans programme with the Ford GT car. That hasn’t brought him any trophies so far.

The season finale in the Verizon Indycar Series 2018 will start at 3.40 pm local time – equivalent to 00.40 CET.

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