Beyond the Flag
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This Tony Kanaan Story Will Melt Every IndyCar Fan’s Heart

By Brittany Frederick

Tony Kanaan on pit lane for the Gateway Motorsports Park tire test. Photo Credit: Chris Jones/Courtesy of IndyCar
Tony Kanaan on pit lane for the Gateway Motorsports Park tire test. Photo Credit: Chris Jones/Courtesy of IndyCar /
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Tony Kanaan is an IndyCar champion, but this past week he also represented the sport’s class off-track by going all out to make a charity appearance.

Fans of IndyCar know that the quality racing is only one of the reasons to love the league. The other is the class of its participants, as Tony Kanaan and a few of his friends demonstrated on Thursday.

Kanaan had been scheduled to be the featured speaker at an event for the Boys and Girls Club of Wayne County on Thursday, but when he was confirmed for the tire test at Gateway Motorsports Park in Missouri, it seemed unlikely he’d make it back to Indiana on the same day.

The No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing driver informed Boys and Girls Club officials on Tuesday that he wasn’t going to be able to appear at the fundraiser after all. But a phone call was made and fellow Indianapolis 500 winner Arie Luyendyk was willing to fly all the way from his home in Arizona to serve as a stand-in.

That alone would’ve been worthy of applause. But Kanaan, despite the geographical writing on the wall, still felt bothered about having to give up.

He told teammate Scott Dixon about the situation. Dixon, too, readily stepped up to help and chartered Kanaan a private plane.

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Kanaan finished testing at Gateway at rougly 3 p.m. ET Thursday, then bolted immediately for the jet. A police escort was waiting in Indiana and rushed him to Richmond High School. He was late, but he made it after all and joined Luyendyk in delighting the crowd of some 400 people.

“I hate to make commitments I can’t fulfill,” Kanaan told IndyCar afterward. “I put myself in their shoes. If I was coming to an event to see a person and they didn’t show, I would understand, but I would feel bad.

“So I didn’t want to let anybody down, especially in Indiana. I just felt that there is always a way and we would make it happen.”

Tony Kanaan’s story tells the tale of not just one, but three IndyCar drivers who went above and beyond to support a good cause. Even when he thought he couldn’t make it, Kanaan – with some help from his friends – kept asking how he could instead of throwing in the towel.

The league is full of other stories demonstrating the character of its drivers and teams. Speaking of the Boys and Girls Clubs, remember this video of Dixon and Dario Franchitti pitching in with the organization a few years back:

There was what happened at this year’s Firestone 600, when the drivers used the rain delay to climb into the stands and spent the rest of their evening signing autographs and taking pictures with fans so they wouldn’t go home empty-handed.

Many of the drivers and teams either support existing causes or have their own charitable efforts. Over at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, the Graham Rahal Foundation has helped raise money for a number of causes. Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay started Racing For Cancer.

Schmidt Peterson Motorsports’ James Hinchcliffe is using his Dancing with the Stars appearance to raise funds for the Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia Foundation of Canada; you can get “Vote 4 Hinch” T-shirts that support both Hinchcliffe and the charity here.

And those are just a few of the numerous examples that show how IndyCar’s finest aren’t just great drivers, but also great individuals.

tories like Tony Kanaan’s deserve more attention. He and the rest of the IndyCar community are always working hard to represent as well off-track as they do on race day, and particularly now with so much difficulty in the world, it’s fantastic that these are athletes one can not only root for but also look up to.

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We don’t all have the ability to charter a private jet, and most of us will never be asked to appear at charity fundraisers, but the example that Kanaan and his friends set on Thursday is admirable. Maybe it’ll inspire others to give back or get involved. If nothing else, it’s another reminder of how IndyCar has value not just as a racing league but as a collection of remarkable people.