Kanaan Brings Team 7-Eleven Car Home Seventh at Texas
Kanaan Brings Team 7-Eleven Car Home in Seventh Place at Texas FORT WORTH, Texas (June 10, 2006) - Team 7-Eleven driver Tony Kanaan didn't have the fastest car on the track but still managed a seventh-place finish Saturday night at the IndyCar Series Bombardier Learjet 500k at Texas Motor Speedway. Starting from the sixth position on the starting grid, Kanaan battled among the top-five contenders throughout the evening, at one point engaging in a prolonged side-by-side battle with Scott Sharp. A late- race stop for a splash of fuel saw the 2004 IndyCar Series champion drop back to ninth position and he was able to gain two additional places before taking the checkered flag. Helio Castroneves took the victory with Scott Dixon second, Dan Wheldon third, Sam Hornish Jr. fourth and Sharp fifth. Through six events this season, Kanaan stands fifth in the driver point standings, 68 points behind leader Castroneves and 30 points shy of fourth-place Hornish. Next up for Kanaan and the entire IndyCar Series will be the SunTrust Indy Challenge on Saturday, June 24 at Richmond International Raceway. The event will be televised live by ESPN2, beginning at 8 p.m. (EDT). It can also be heard live by XM Satellite Radio subscribers by tuning into XM channel 145. Tony Kanaan, #11 Team 7-Eleven Dallara/Honda/Firestone: "This was a long night. That's about all I can say. The Team 7-Eleven car was pretty good, it just wasn't good enough. It was a long race and was typical Texas in the amount of side-by-side racing I had to do." Kim Green, President, Andretti Green Racing: "Tony did a great job. The first stint the car was a bit of a handful and he hung in there really well with the leaders. We made some changes on the pit stop and he was very competitive. Then, we just seemed to lose a little bit of speed and lose the handling a bit on the race car. We just didn't quite have it tonight. But, I'm really proud of our pit stops and the way Tony hung in there. It was just not a typical Andretti Green race at Texas. We've got some work to do on our race cars, but we'll get on up to the Kansas open test and get them sorted out." 2006 Bombardier Learjet 500k Results Pos. Name Laps Pos. Name Laps 1 Helio Castroneves 200 11 Bryan Herta 199 2 Scott Dixon 200 12 Danica Patrick 199 3 Dan Wheldon 200 13 Dario Franchitti 199 4 Sam Hornish Jr. 200 14 Marco Andretti 199 5 Scott Sharp 200 15 Jeff Simmons 198 6 Vitor Meira 200 16 Felipe Giaffone 197 7 Tony Kanaan 200 17 Eddie Cheever Jr. 197 8 Kosuke Matsuura 200 18 Buddy Rice 70 9 Ed Carpenter 200 19 Buddy Lazier 56 10 Tomas Scheckter 199