1,000 Greatest Drivers: Tony Kanaan

He should've gone by Antoine Kanaan.

Did you know that’s his real name? Antoine Rizkallah Kanaan Filho? So much more fun than his dumbed-down nickname for pronunciation-deprived Americans. Anyway, even though I mentioned how Kanaan and Simon Pagenaud’s careers share many similarities on the surface, I definitely think Kanaan was the better driver for a number of reasons. First off, he is one of the best passers in IndyCar history. His 150 passes for the lead in IndyCar are the most of all time. Better than Foyt, better than Andretti, better than anybody. Would you have guessed that? Probably not, but it shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise I suppose since he had a long career and he peaked in the all-oval IRL, which was renowned for its side-by-side pack racing. In his Indy 500 win alone, he made 12 passes for the lead. He was the first driver to lead his first seven Indy 500 starts from 2002-2008 and then he added another streak of seven consecutive races led a decade later; these are tied for the second-longest streaks in history. Kanaan broke the record for most Indy 500s led in 2018, although Scott Dixon broke that record last year. Meanwhile, Pagenaud’s lead change record of 22-28 is definitely pretty paltry compared to Kanaan’s 150-130.

Second, even though Kanaan and Pagenaud were just about tied in my teammate model, Kanaan had a much better record against his top-tier teammates than Pagenaud did. From 2000-2013, Kanaan had a winning record against every teammate he ever competed against, including Alex Zanardi (5-1), Dan Wheldon (18-16), Dario Franchitti (34-13), Ryan Hunter-Reay (8-7), Takuma Sato (6-5), and Rubens Barrichello (6-4). That’s a lot of good people he beat, and his records against Zanardi and Franchitti are particularly astonishing. When you further consider that Kanaan intentionally let off the gas to let Franchitti win at Fontana in 2005 and handed him the win at the 2007 Indy 500 by pitting right before rain ended the race after he’d dominated all day, that could’ve been even worse. Pagenaud has winning records against some great drivers, but nothing like Kanaan’s record, even though he eventually met his match with Scott Dixon.

Finally, Kanaan had a very unlucky career while Pagenaud had a very lucky one. If you look at their objective raw statistics without considering any context of how they got their finishes, they look identical. However, when you consider any kind of advanced statistics whatsoever, they do not:

Even though Kanaan only barely beat Pagenaud in wins, he kind of crushed him in everything else. The fact that Kanaan had between 21-25 lead shares, TNL, and CRL suggest that he should have ultimately had twice as many wins as Pagenaud if they had balanced luck. But they did not have balanced luck: Kanaan was famously unlucky for most of his career (especially his prime Andretti years) while Pagenaud was famously lucky (especially at Penske). The only categories besides wins where Pagenaud even comes close are poles (I’d say qualifying was definitely Pagenaud’s greatest strength overall) and fastest races, which should be ignored, since I have no data on that prior to 2013. Obviously most of Kanaan’s best seasons came before that and most of Pagenaud’s best seasons came after, but even considering that, Kanaan still tied him. He was clearly better in IndyCar, even adjusting for the fact that Pagenaud’s level of competition in the 2010s was probably better than Kanaan’s level of competition in the 2000s. Also, Kanaan won an Indy 500 driving for KV Racing; can you really see Pagenaud doing that (as much as he did overachieve at Schmidt Peterson Motorsports)? As an overall driver, Pagenaud comes a little closer since he won an American Le Mans Series title and Kanaan definitely doesn’t have a sports car accomplishment like that, but I’m still taking Kanaan. These two drivers are a great example of how basic box score stats can lie to you if you don’t consider additional context, which is another reason I wanted to do them together. Don’t get me wrong: I do think Pagenaud was great, but Kanaan was definitely greater.