IndyCar: Will Tony Kanaan ever win another race?

Former IndyCar champion and Indianapolis 500 winner Tony Kanaan has gone almost five years without a victory. Will he ever win another race?

As an IndyCar driver, there are two things that change your career: winning a championship and winning the Indianapolis 500.

Tony Kanaan got the former out of the way all the way back in the 2004 season, which was his seventh season competing in the sport, and he got the latter out of the way in the 97th running of the race, a race that featured an all-time record 68 lead changes, back in 2013.

But the 16-time IndyCar race winner has now not won any race since the 2014 season when he won the season finale at Auto Club Speedway in late August.

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Kanaan’s win drought is up to 75 races, which is the longest win drought of his IndyCar career and the second longest win drought among those of the sport’s 19 active full-time drivers, as Andretti Herta Autosport’s Marco Andretti leads these drivers with 135 consecutive races without a victory.

Additionally, Kanaan has not finished a race on the podium since he finished in second place in the race at Texas Motor Speedway in June of 2017. As a result, his podium finish drought is now up to 34 races, which, if it were a win drought, would still be the fourth longest win drought among those of these 19 drivers.

Will the 44-year-old Brazilian ever find victory lane again in IndyCar?

Since Kanaan joined A.J. Foyt Enterprises ahead of the 2018 season, he has had hardly any success. In his first 26 races for the team, he has recorded only five top 10 finishes, and his best finish is his sixth place finish in last year’s race at Exhibition Place.

The driver who entered the 2018 season, his 16th full season in IndyCar not including his five seasons in CART, with just one non-top 10 finish in the championship standings finished in 16th place in the standings with a career-low average starting position of 14.9 and a career-low average finishing position of 13.8. Additionally, this season was the first season of his career during which he did not record a podium finish or even a top five finish.

That said, Kanaan’s speed in last year’s Indianapolis 500 showed promise for him, his #14 Chevrolet and A.J. Foyt Enterprises in general. Had it not been for a flat tire and his late crash, he had the car to beat, hands down.

But that promise has led to absolutely nothing this season.

Kanaan’s career-low average starting position of 14.9 now looks like gold, as does his career-low average finishing position of 13.8. Through the first nine races of the 2019 season, these two statistics are 20.7 and 16.2, respectively.

Kanaan’s lone top 10 finish this season is his ninth place finish in the Indy 500, which he achieved simply by staying out of trouble and not falling off the lead lap. He currently sits in 17th in the championship standings ahead of just two other full-time drivers, of whom one is teammate Matheus Leist in 19th.

This lack of success is most definitely reflective of A.J. Foyt Enterprises’ struggles above everything else. That said, as far as Kanaan’s career is concerned, he is certainly not competing at his highest level, as was evident even before he arrived at A.J. Foyt Enterprises.

After reeling off nine consecutive finishes of sixth place or higher in the championship standings, he entered the 2018 season on a streak of six consecutive finishes of seventh or lower, and he also won only one race during his four seasons driving for Chip Ganassi Racing, one of the top teams in the sport.

But to pin these recent flat-out terrible results on Kanaan alone would be ludicrous, as would saying that he as a driver does not have what it takes to get back to victory lane.

Kanaan has made clear that he feels that he can stick around in IndyCar for several more seasons, and with A.J. Foyt Enterprises set to undergo a number of big changes so that the 2020 season doesn’t turn into the disaster that the 2019 season has been, it would be in the team’s best interest to retain the veteran for at least another year.

The team feel that they can get back to the level that would give Kanaan a chance to deliver them their first podium finish since Takuma Sato finished in second place in the second of two races at the Raceway on Belle Isle in May of 2015 and their first victory since Sato won the race on the streets of Long Beach, California in April of 2013.

As long as the Indy 500 exists and Kanaan is on the entry list for that race, he will have that chance if A.J. Foyt Enterprises can prove that where they are right now is, in fact, rock bottom and they can start to make improvements. If they can make enough improvements, there is no reason to believe that he cannot be a contender at several other tracks as well.

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Will Tony Kanaan win another IndyCar race before he retires, or was the night of Saturday, August 30, 2014 the final night during which we will ever see him drive to victory lane?