RICHMOND, Va. — Just one week after suffering what he called “the hardest hit of his career,” Tony Kanaan won Saturday night’s crashfest at Richmond Int’l Raceway.
Kanaan’s victory in the SunTrust Indy Challenge was the first victory of the season for the Andretti Green Racing driver from Brazil.
This year’s race was extended to 300 laps to give the fans more action. But with a record-tying nine caution flags for 102 laps, the extra 50 laps could have been added to ensure the only lengthy green-flag run of the race.
“We had 72 laps of green flag racing at the end, so it was a great move because at least the fans got to see that many laps in a row, which didn’t happen up until then,” Kanaan said.  “Well, a lot of action and definitely a lot of yellows. We benefitted from being in the front, for sure. That’s just a typical Richmond race, a very difficult, very long race. At one point, I looked, it was lap 245, and I just wondered if it was five laps to go like last year, but I knew we still had 55. 
“So, it was a tough race. I think we had a strong car. Marco Andretti did, too. We did split the strategies just to try to cover both bases, and finally, the luck was on my side.”
Kanaan started on the pole and led twice for 166 laps, including the final 94. Andretti led once for 90 laps and appeared to have the best car in the field, but AGR’s pit strategy didn’t fall in his favor, dropping him to a ninth-place finish, one lap off the pace.
Andretti gave up the lead when he made a green-flag pit stop on lap 206 for four tires and fuel, which put him one lap down. The team was hoping the race would finish under the green, but when Jaime Camara crashed on lap 218, it allowed the top-nine cars in the race, including Kanaan, to pit under green.
Camara was running third at the time and led 44 laps — the first time he has been in front during his IndyCar career.
Kanaan was the first car off pit road after his stop on lap 220, and he stayed in front to defeat Helio Castroneves by 4.7691 seconds. IndyCar point-leader and Indianapolis 500 winner Scott Dixon was third, followed by his Target Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Dan Wheldon, who ran out of fuel at the end of the race, giving up the position to Dixon.
Oriol Servia was fifth.
With more than one-third of the race run under the yellow flag, the average speed was 108.790 miles per hour, leaving many in the estimated crowd of 55,000, time to visit the concession stand.
In fact, there were just three green- flag laps of racing in the first 20 laps of the race.
“I think it was busier with 26 cars and a lot of people hitting each other,” Kanaan said. “But this race is always going to be busy. You’re always going to be mad at somebody or somebody is going to be mad at you because you’re always passing or trying to lap somebody. That’s the way it is. What are you going to do?” 
Despite the “demolition derby” look to this race, Kanaan is glad to see it on the schedule.
“I think it’s a pretty good thing to have, so we have all types of diversities when you go from a superspeedway to a small track and then go to just a little track like Iowa and have millions of passes, and then you come back here and have a totally different race, so that definitely adds something for the championship.”
And Kanaan’s victory gets him back in the title chase just one week after he suffered a hard slam into the wall at Iowa Speedway. He is fourth in points, 82 behind the leader, Dixon, who now has a 43-point lead over Castroneves.
Kanaan was able to fight through the pain he suffered one week earlier by hitting the road and working out.
“Last Sunday night, I was pretty much in pain and I went home on Monday and ran for an hour,” Kanaan said. “I put on my iPod and selected a playlist that pumps me up, and I went for it. I was in the gym on Tuesday. It was the hardest hit I took in my life, although I didn’t break anything. I was in a lot of pain in my back, but I said I have to do it.
“That is how I kept myself up. I work better under pressure. Nothing in my life came easy. When I have a hard time, I get the strength to turn a situation around.”