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While it has yet to be officially announced, we all know that Tony Kanaan is now headed to AJ Foyt Enterprises for 2018. Who he will be displacing is not clear, although smarter people than me are saying that Carlos Muñoz will be the odd man out. That means Kanaan will be driving the famous No.14 car and Conor Daly will most likely be driving the not-so-famous No.4. But that’s speculation on one of the many questions surrounding this move.

I’m still not sure what I think about all of this. I’m a huge Tony Kanaan fan and I’ve been a lifelong fan of AJ Foyt. With Helio Castroneves seemingly headed to Team Penske’s sports car team, Tony Kanaan is without question my favorite among the current crop of drivers. AJ Foyt is my all-time favorite driver. Period. He’s not just my favorite IndyCar driver – it transcends all racing series. I also consider him the greatest all-around driver that ever strapped on a helmet. Ayrton Senna is a close second, but he never raced ovals.

So you would think that I would be ecstatic about my favorite current driver, going to drive for my favorite driver of all-time. Well, no I’m not.

First of all, let’s get this out of the way – I think Tony Kanaan can still drive a race car very competitively. What we saw most of this past season is not indicative of what Tony Kanaan has become as a driver. His last three races, he had finishes of sixteenth, twentieth and sixteenth, respectively. That pretty well sums up his fourth and final season at Chip Ganassi Racing.

While Kanaan had Top-Ten finishes at Barber (seventh), Phoenix (sixth), the Indianapolis 500 (fifth), Detroit (tenth), Texas (second), Iowa (ninth) and Pocono (fifth); there were nine races with finishes of fifteenth or worse. But I still maintain that was due to bad luck and the bad circumstances surrounding Chip Ganassi than diminished skills. Although Scott Dixon was only three points from the championship lead heading into the final weekend, this was not your normal Ganassi team. From what I understand, there was dissension at practically every corner. Bad chemistry within a team usually translates to poor results.

If you’ll recall, a few weeks ago I predicted that Kanaan would take over the seat in the No.7 car at Schmidt Peterson Motorsports vacated by Mikhail Aleshin. That was partly because I thought Kanaan wanted to stay with Honda and I thought a paring with James Hinchcliffe on a team that had won a couple of races over the last three seasons made sense. While that seat is still open, all signs point to Kanaan driving a Chevy-powered car for AJ Foyt – a team with only one victory (Takuma Sato in 2013 at Long Beach) in the past fifteen seasons.

My question is…what happened? Did no other teams have any interest in signing a former series champion and Indianapolis 500 winner that is one of the most popular drivers in the series? I hate to be blunt, but AJ Foyt Enterprises is where careers go to die. Takuma Sato made it out of there to become an Indianapolis 500 champion and Ryan Hunter-Reay survived a partial season at Foyt to win the “500” and become a series champion; but they are the exception – not the norm.

Jack Hawksworth, Vitor Miera, Darren Manning, Felipe Giaffone and Eliseo Salazar are just a few of the drivers that had once-promising careers, but never drove an Indy car again after leaving the Foyt stable.

For the past few seasons, each year we hear in the offseason about all of the positive changes that Larry Foyt has made at his father’s team and that next season could be their year. But when next season rolls around, it’s the same old stuff. After a while, you learn to simply tune out the offseason sunshine regarding the Foyt team.

Somewhere I read where Kanaan was quoted as saying he had always wanted to drive for AJ Foyt and this was finally his chance. I also read where Foyt considered Kanaan one of the few current drivers that had earned his respect because he wasn’t a crybaby and had come up the hard way and drove his heart out. So there is mutual respect and excitement from both sides.

Maybe this will be different. For one thing, there is no pressure or burden of expectations. Many of you were quick to point out Monday that JR Hildebrand had impossible shoes to fill when he replaced Josef Newgarden at Ed Carpenter Racing. No disrespect intended for either of the two Foyt drivers for 2017, but Kanaan does not really have a tough act to follow. In short, the pressure is off.

Tony Kanaan may be the best driver that AJ Foyt has had to drive for him since, well…AJ Foyt. Kanaan has nothing to lose other than the respect of Foyt, which probably won’t happen. If Kanaan produces poor results, well…it was expected of the team. If he wins or has a string of solid finishes; it’s great for Foyt and for Kanaan who would probably love to show Chip Ganassi that he was not the problem. With no pressure, 2018 could end up being one of the most fun seasons of Kanaan’s IndyCar career.

One thing I keep hearing is that the main problem with Foyt’s team is that they are starving for good engineers. Perhaps Kanaan’s longtime engineer and friend, Eric Cowdin, will join Kanaan at Foyt. That certainly couldn’t hurt – especially heading into this era without different aero kits. Every team will be starting out with the same amount of data. Starting out with a top-notch engineer like Cowdin could be a big shot in the arm to the team that struggled mightily in their first year with the Chevy aero kit this past season.

If predictions are true and Conor Daly stays with Foyt, having Kanaan as a teammate and an engineer like Cowdin on the staff can’t hurt either. Daly showed an upward trend in the last five races of the season, with finishes of tenth, fourteenth, fifth, eleventh and tenth. Normally that would not get anyone’s attention, but when you compare that stretch with the rest of the season, it was a marked improvement. With Kanaan in the final stages of his IndyCar career, I’m thinking he would be more than willing to serve as a mentor to the young Conor Daly.

So while I was puzzled and even frustrated when I learned that Tony Kanaan was headed to AJ Foyt Enterprises, I’m beginning to sort out the positives from a fan standpoint. This could be a win-win for all involved. Hopefully, this is not where Tony Kanaan’s career goes to die.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on September 29, 2017 at 4:03 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.