How close was Tony Kanaan to driving? Nolan Siegel's status, possible backup drivers for Toronto

Indianapolis Star

a day ago

NEWTON, Iowa — As he's claimed numerous times, Tony Kanaan has no desire to race again in IndyCar. And yet, the 50-year-old Arrow McLaren team principal, who spent parts of 26 seasons racing in the highest levels of American open-wheel racing, slipped into one of Pato O'Ward's spare fire suits, pulled the young Mexican driver's race seat out of the No. 5, placed it in the No. 6 and climbed in.
The few minutes of contemplating coming out of retirement came after the team's 20-year-old driver Nolan Siegel was found to have suffered a 'mild concussion' from his severe one-car crash on Lap 248 Saturday afternoon in Race 1 of IndyCar's doubleheader weekend at Iowa Speedway. Siegel initially underwent concussion testing with IndyCar's medical team Saturday in the moments after his crash, and due to the severity indicated by the G forces measured the accelerometer in the drivers' earpieces, Siegel was required to be rechecked early Sunday morning in order to determine whether he'd be cleared to run at 1.
At 9:30 a.m., the team learned their first-year full-time driver would not be allowed to race, and not long after, the team determined it would not run the No. 6 Chevy that Siegel had qualified fifth for the race.
An hour before Sunday's green flag, Kanaan sat down with select reporters to explain why the team elected not to run the race, why neither Kanaan nor anyone else would start the car and the process the team will undergo in the coming days to have someone, Siegel or otherwise, ready to pilot the No. 6 machine come Friday's event-opening practice on the streets of Toronto.
Kanaan said he went to bed expecting Siegel to be cleared, but given the tight timeline around the doubleheader weekend and the lengths the team had to go through just to ready the car for Sunday, and the risk of a new, last-minute driver crashing after starting last (27th) on the grid due to the driver change and the tight turnaround ahead of Toronto, the risks outweighed the rewards of starting a substitute driver.
What Kanaan said he didn't immediately think of Saturday evening while solidifying his decision not to have anyone else but Siegel start Sunday's race was the team's Leaders Circle battle and the points impact the No. 6 would suffer by not starting Sunday's race if Siegel was not cleared.
Drivers and cars that qualify for a race, but don't start, receive half points for the effort, meaning three points for finishing 27th instead of the minimum of five for pulling off pit lane and taking part in the parade laps. After crashing from seventh place Saturday and dropping to finish 24th , a 20-point points reduction, the No. 6 car sat 21st in entrant points after Race 1, just one spot above the cutline of the top 22 charter-holding entrants that will be slotted in at the end of this season to receive the roughly $1.2 million payout from the series — deemed the Leaders Circle program.
At that point, the No. 6 was 19 points clear of 22nd (the No. 45 of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing) and 40 points clear of the first car on the outside looking in (the No. 77 of Juncos Hollinger Racing).
So Sunday morning, after having been made aware of that and learning that Siegel would not be cleared to race, Kanaan inquired to series race director Kyle Novak about the ability of setting up that emergency on-track session last minute, in order to give Kanaan the opportunity to start and park and earn the No. 6 the extra two points, points Kanaan hopes and believes won't be make-or-break in the team's pursuit to hold onto a Leaders Circle spot, but available points nonetheless.
It was in those few minutes as Arrow McLaren waited to hear whether IndyCar would go one step further in making an exception for the unique circumstances that Kanaan entertained the idea of hoping into the cockpit of a racecar again on the grid and took the initial steps of preparing himself for such an endeavor.
'My stuff isn't even here; that's how badly I don't want to (race), but Pato's suit fits me, as well as his seat, so I put his seat in the car and sat in it just in case,' Kanaan said. 'We were pending (IndyCar's) decision and thought, 'Why wait and rush it? Let's just sit there and get started.''
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But when Novak reaffirmed IndyCar's position that they had needed to know by Saturday night in order to schedule the session and that one was necessary for Kanaan or anyone other than Siegel to start the race, Arrow McLaren was fine living with how the process had taken place.
'Internally, I've said, 'I'm not even thinking about (not making the Leaders Circle) because we're not a team that shouldn't be in the top 22,' Kanaan said. 'Sometimes, IndyCar does something where 'This is the rule, but it's up to our discretion,' but I'll pick my battles. It's fine. I'm not here to create more chaos.
'Would it be cool for you guys to talk about me being on the grid and (Scott) Dixon making fun of me (for coming out of retirement again)? Sure, but really, I truly, truly love what I'm doing now. I always loved driving an Indy car, but I have no desire to go against these guys and get beat, cause I'll get mad.'
According to the rule book, drivers who have not participated at any point in on-track activities during the weekend are not allowed to even take the green flag – a rule that came into play a year ago at Iowa Speedway as Jack Harvey was balancing a debilitating back injury between qualifying and Race 1, but Dale Coyne Racing was not allowed to have anyone else start Race 1.
Kanaan said he only would've performed a start and park, meaning he'd take the green flag and immediately pull into pit lane and retire the car, as the only option instead of pursuing another driver.
'I don't disagree with the rules, and rules are rules,' Kanaan said. 'I didn't want to think Nolan wouldn't be in the car, and I didn't think I was going to field a car and run the whole race starting from dead last.
'And even if that wasn't me, to do what? And then if you do more damage, you have to turn (the car around for Toronto), so the decision was made to not run the car if Nolan wasn't going to run it. That was pretty much set in my mind.'
As Siegel heads back to Indianapolis from a disappointing weekend at Iowa Speedway, his next 72 hours or so will include almost constant round-the-clock work, recovery efforts and evaluation that will ultimately determine whether he's back in the car Friday afternoon in Toronto. It's a moment where Siegel and Arrow McLaren will really lean on its head of human performance, health and wellness Ryan Harber, who for years and years had been Kanaan's physiologist and who the team hired in the offseason away from Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.
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'(Siegel) needs to rest. We need to keep an eye on if he's sleeping more. (He'll do) mild workouts, and we'll put him on the simulator,' Kanaan said. 'And then Thursday morning, he's going to get his evaluation to (possibly) be cleared.'
Kanaan said the team doesn't yet have a backup driver lined up in case Siegel isn't cleared for Toronto, but he expects to have that settled by Monday and have said backup driver in the shop to begin the preparation process. Essentially, Arrow McLaren will ready both Siegel and his potential stand in this week so both possibilities are covered.
Among the names mentioned include recent Indy 500 one-off drivers Ryan Hunter-Reay and Harvey, who is in his first year as pit reporter for Fox's IndyCar broadcasts, as well as 2024 IndyCar Rookie of the Year Linus Lundqvist, who raced last year for Chip Ganassi Racing and who achieved one pole and two podiums but whose ride was lost as the team scaled back from five full-time cars to three due to the series' launched charter system.
Lundqvist has been in attendance at most IndyCar races this season, including this weekend, both to try and continue conversations and remain visible in hopes of future full-time opportunities coming together, while also remaining a possible stand in for an injured driver.
Kanaan also name-dropped Theo Pourchaire, who made his IndyCar debut a year ago with Arrow McLaren at Long Beach in injury fill-in duty for David Malukas, and who then made five starts with the team through mid-June and had been announced as the driver of the No. 6 for each remaining race in 2024 after the Indy 500. Pourchaire was then unceremoniously cut to make room for the team to hire Siegel full-time, though the young Frenchman filled in for an injured Alexander Rossi last year at Toronto.
Pourchaire is racing in ELMS in the LMP2 class while also serving as a test and development driver for Peugeot, and his calendar next weekend would appear to be open if called upon.
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'I'm going to sleep on it and think about what's the best fit, because it's also going to be a guy who's going to sit there all week and who then might not drive,' Kanaan said.
Since the team will have to leave for Toronto on Thursday before knowing the results of Siegel's reevaluation, and because there's always a chance his symptoms flare up after getting back in the car, Kanaan said the team will bring that backup driver with them for the entirety of the Toronto race weekend.
'I don't want to go through what I did last year, staying up all night flying Pourchaire in from Europe,' said Kanaan, referring to the real-life planes, trains and automobiles episode he lived a year ago to secure a replacement for Rossi at Toronto. 'So we'll have a backup in place.'