CART: Tony Kanaan Event Preview, Mid-Ohio
11 August 2000
Posted By Terry
Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
"Im ready to go for a road course run. Everything went well,
physically, on the ovals at Michigan and Chicago. Now, our bad luck
during those races is a whole other story Id rather forget about and
move on. I spent part of two days testing on the road course at Sebring
last week (Thursday and Friday) to see how my arm works. I felt great.
Im still not 100 percent, but Im getting closer and closer all the
time. This Mid-Ohio and Elkhart Lake swing will be the true test.
Theyre a couple of demanding road courses, but theyre the kind of
tracks I like the best. We tested really well at Mid-Ohio back in the
springtime, so Im really looking forward to this weekend. I qualified
well (fourth in 1999) and finished pretty well (eighth in 1998) here my
first two seasons, when it was the home track for the team I was driving
for (Forsythe Championship Group .... formerly Tasman Motorsports), so
Ive always liked this place. As a team this year, we seem to be
creeping up on our first great finish. I hope its finally going to
come this weekend."--Tony Kanaan
NOTES-- Kanaan is back for his third event .. his first on a road course .. since being sidelined for three races with a broken left forearm and four cracked ribs in a June 17th qualifying accident at Detroit. Mechanical maladies put him out prematurely at his first two events back from injury ..both on ovals .. the July 23 Michigan 500 (water temperature problems) and the July 30 Target Grand Prix of Chicago (gearbox).
-- Kanaan qualified a season-high third at Chicago two weekends ago and was running third when the gearbox trouble ended his day some 70 laps from the finish.
-- This weekend marks Kanaans third appearance at Mid-Ohio in a Champ Car. He qualified 18th and finished eighth here in his Rookie of the Year season of 1998, and he qualified fourth and finished 23rd here last year, both for nearby Hilliard, Ohio-based Forsythe Championship Racing (formerly Tasman Motorsports).
-- Kanaan underwent surgery for his broken left forearm at Detroit. Two metal plates and 14 screws were used to repair the injury. They will be removed at a later date.
-- In 47 career Champ Car starts, Kanaan, the 1998 series Rookie of the Year, has one win (Michigan in 1999), one pole (Long Beach in 1999), and three podium finishes in all. (Laguna Seca and Houston in 1998 to go with last years Michigan event). He also started on the front row at Laguna Seca in 1999.
-- Team owner Morris Nunn was technical director at Target/Chip Ganassi Racing during the last four CART FedEx Championship Series championships ...Juan Montoya last year, Alex Zanardi in 1998 and 1999, and Jimmy Vasser in 1996. Hes won three of the last four Mid-Ohio events (with Zanardi in 1996 and 97, and with Montoya last year).
In addition to testing the effectiveness of Kanaans left arm on the road course at Sebring last week (Aug. 3-4), the team gave Hollywood-sponsored Indy Lights competitor Felipe Giaffone a chance to drive the #55 Hollywood/Mo Nunn Racing Mercedes-Benz Reynard. Giaffone, the Brazilian who scored his first Lights victory at Michigan two weeks prior, turned in a solid performance at Sebring in his first-ever stint behind the wheel of a Champ Car. He recorded 185 miles (111 laps) over the two days, and set a fast lap of 54.0 seconds on the 1.72-mile road course, within 1 second of Kanaans baseline time. "He didnt set a wheel off course the whole time, and showed a very deliberate and progressive attitude in getting the car up to speed," said race engineer Eric Cowdin. Added Giaffone: "Before I got here, I thought maybe I just couldnt drive the car because it has too much power. But then, once I got in, I started getting used to everything, and Tony was giving me some tips along the way that helped me a lot. By the end of the first day I was pretty happy. I didnt push too hard because I didnt want to make any mistakes. What impressed me the most was the cars speed out of the corners. Its much harder to control than a Lights car. The top speed is fast, as I figured, but that didnt turn out to be the problem. The brakes are unbelievable. Overall, it feels like a pretty big car, but even so it has quite a lot of grip through the slow corners. This is a big confidence-builder. It felt good to hear Tony saying the same things about the car after he got out that I was saying. Talking about Champ Cars to the engineers is a new language to me. Learning (all the controls buttons and readouts on) the steering wheel was very interesting ... overwhelming at first. They were telling me to go up on the boost, and it took me four laps to find the right button. Im sure they were laughing about that in the pits while I was out on the track. Im very happy to have had this opportunity."
Text provided by Laz Denes
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