Kanaan sheds a tear over Castroneves salute on final slowdown lap
Tony Kanaan, for whom today’s Indianapolis 500 was the 390th and final race in his IndyCar career, admits he shed a tear when his longtime rival Helio Castroneves saluted him on the slowdown lap.
The 2013 Indy 500 winner whose Arrow McLaren Chevrolet started the race from ninth, finished 16th after a last-lap battle with four-time winner Castroneves. Afterward, Kanaan described himself as “grateful, relieved, happy, sad at the same time. There are so many emotions right now.”
He went on: “I told the guys before we started it was either going to be a win, or anything apart from the win we were going to celebrate regardless.
“I think I would do a disgrace to almost 400,000 people that were there, that made me feel the way they did, to say I’m sad. I had a laugh.
“Helio and I battling for 15th and 16th on the last lap like we’re going for the lead! It was like, who’s playing pranks with us? We went side by side on the backstretch after the checker and we saluted with each other, and I just told him actually I dropped a tear because of that, and he said, ‘I did, too…’
“We started it in ’87, and the last lap of the race we’re actually battling – my last race in IndyCar and we’re battling like it was for the lead. But I wouldn’t have it any different; neither to him.”
He later added: “We were battling on the last lap, the last restart. We went side-by-side twice. A lot of memories came to my mind, and I even said how ironic it is that we started it together and I get to battle him on the last lap of my last race.
“It’s pretty neat. It’s a pretty cool story. He’s a great friend; my reference — a guy that I love and hate a lot throughout my career! And like he just told me, ‘Who am I going to look (at) on the time sheet when I come into the pits now?’ Because we always said that it didn’t matter if I was 22nd and he was 23rd, my day was OK, and vice versa.
“Yeah, it was pretty cool.”
Kanaan said that he was relieved that his 22nd and final Indy 500 was run in front of the race’s biggest crowd since 2016, rather than the empty grandstands seen in 2020 – due to the COVID-19 pandemic – in what was supposed to be his final year.
“One thing is for certain — I think I sat here three years ago and I said I’m not retiring because I don’t want to race in (front of) an empty stand,” he said. “What (the fans) did for me today puts an end of me coming back here. Because that experience right there, I don’t think I will have it ever again.
“In a way, finishing 16th will take everybody’s idea out – ‘Oh, you finished third, you should do it again.’ Kyle Larson is driving that car next year. Hopefully I will be around.”
Source: RACER
