INDYCAR SERIES: INDIANAPOLIS 500

May 30, 2004

Tony Kanaan

Dan Wheldon

TONY KANAAN: Well, long day, for everybody. Fun race. I never had so much fun in my life with a teammate that I had with Dan today. I tell you, you know, winning races is important, and winning championships, but the relationship and when you get out on the track and you can fight that hard between each other and still get out of the car and be able to laugh about it, that's, for me, it's priceless. This guy is going to give me too much work, so I'm going to try to win the championship very soon because he is a nightmare. (Laughter.) Great effort. Not great enough. I don't think -- in my point of view, this race needs to be won by the best car and the best driver, and I think it happened today. I don't think we had the car to win the race. I'm not going to sit here and say, "Yeah, I wish it was going to go green." I don't think the result would have changed even if it wasn't raining, because he was so much stronger than me and Dan. Great job from Honda. I mean, top four, it's a big effort. I'm happy for them. Thanks to 7-11 and the whole team. Great battle with my teammates.

DAN WHELDON: He teaches me everything. Between him Bryan and Dario, I have three of the best teachers out there.

TONY KANAAN: Unfortunately, the battle wasn't for the lead, it wasn't for the race win. It was a pleasure.

DAN WHELDON: It's like Tony said. I had -- probably that was my most enjoyable race ever from driving -- from a driving standpoint. We went into it -- into one a couple of times really hard with one another, but left each other, I think, enough room so that we could do that. It was a lot of fun, but like Tony said, I think that we did an absolutely fantastic job, with three of the top four speaks volumes of Andretti Green Racing. The crew worked very hard all month. I'm very happy. You know, Honda, they won Motegi and now they have won the Indianapolis 500. They are two of the biggest races of the year for them, so for them -- we're going to have to slug it out between the two of us hopefully. You know, I have to say, the Indianapolis 500 kicks ass. It is the best race in the world by miles. And when you can race -- and I think throughout the grid, there's people that respect each other a lot and can really race one another real hard. I certain learned from last year because I actually raced Sam Hornish real hard. Overall, I had a lot of fun.

TONY KANAAN: I don't think so. I think it was as competitive or maybe even more competitive than last year. It's a combination of downforce and the engine power that they cut, obviously trying to make it safer. My point of view is if it's for safety, it's good. It's harder for us, I would say, with less power, because when you get together in traffic, sometimes the engine takes a while to pick back up. But it was a clean race, I think, for the weather conditions and all of the battles they had. There was a lot of crashes, thank God nobody was hurt. So I guess the change did work. We never got anybody hurt through the whole month. A couple crashes, that's always going to happen, but everybody is in one piece and that's a big accomplishment for IRL. If anybody -- people like to blast us here in Indianapolis, but like Dan said, you know, people that they are criticizing, it's because they want to be here, and they are not able to. So they can come here any time.

DAN WHELDON: Well, I haven't seen all of his races here, but I'm sure he's gutted to have three of the top four and not win the race. The poor guy has tried so hard to win the race, but in the future Andretti Green is going to be able to win the Indianapolis 500. It is just a tad disappointing, because we were so competitive. I don't exactly know how many, but I'm sure TK and I led a lot of laps between us. To come up a little bit short, its make you want the Indianapolis 500 to start again in June.

TONY KANAAN: To me, at the end of the race and he said, "Hey, we didn't have enough speed, do we." I said, "Yeah, I know." So I guess -- and that's all us. I think we did a great job during the month, but we weren't fast enough today.

TONY KANAAN: I think me and Dan we were all pretty close. I had enough fuel to finish the race. I had to save a lot of fuel to be able to finish on the green. But could we gamble? The best gamble, if you can predict the weather, you are going to win every race. Yeah, we could have gambled, put half a tank on get out in the lead and try to be lighter than Buddy, but what about if it didn't rain? I'm going to have to come in on the green. It's those kind of decisions that you always think afterwards; yeah, I could have done different. But, you know, when the pressure is on, you have to do the most sensible thing, and the most sensible thing was put full tires and full tank, and it still wasn't good enough to finish the race without any yellow flag. That was my case.

DAN WHELDON: Mine was pretty similar. I think -- I think from what they -- I don't know if they told me the exact choice; I think they tell me what I want to hear. (Laughter). I honestly think though that the guy that caused my race is Tony Kanaan. Personally, I thank him and Mr. Penske, they are absolutely fantastic. Some of the things he dreams up, I am amazed with. He's certainly very good. He told me that we could make it till the end. But I did have to say, I couldn't go crazy, which tends to frustrate me a little bit. But, hey, it's basically wearing that green card, you can see him racing Buddy. The only thing that I would have liked is if I could have helped him maybe get past. But like I said, Buddy, Buddy was stellar all month. I couldn't think of a nicer kid out of this team to win the race, and I think he'll make the IRL proud as an Indianapolis 500 champion.

DAN WHELDON: It gave me enough time to eat pasta, drink water, check the data and change my suit.

TONY KANAAN: The guy changed his suit between 30 laps and the end of race. I don't understand it. Actually he has plenty of suits. I only had one; I was sweating and I had to keep my own. The rain, it's definitely more distraction. You want to get it done. You wait the whole month. But once you are in the car -- you probably get anxious out of the car. Once you put your helmet on, you're ready to race. No matter you interrupt ten times the race, you put us back and we are ready to continue racing. Now we feel exhausted. We wanted to go party. I don't know if --

DAN WHELDON: You can buy me dinner tonight.

TONY KANAAN: No, you can buy dinner.

DAN WHELDON: Yeah, Dario can buy us dinner.

TONY KANAAN: Bryan.

DAN WHELDON: Yeah, Bryan's rich.

DAN WHELDON: A lot of people said that. We didn't go four-wide through the corner but certainly

we felt it down the straight, a four-wide. It's obviously the Indianapolis 500, everybody wants to get to the front, and they know it's critical to be right around the front all the time. I think with the length of the straight, and with the way the restarts are, it tends to allow you to suck up to the cars in front. So, it happened to me when I -- when I was leading him, because I left -- I looked in my mirror at turn four and thought, yes, I got him before turn one, and then he came blasting by. You know what, I just had a ton of fun. I could race like that every day of the week, I really could, for 365 days a year.