Kanaan, AJ Foyt Racing 'ready for a new challenge'

It was a jovial mood at the Foyt Wine Vault on Thursday. With the signing of Tony Kanaan, AJ Foyt Racing did something it's never done before – hire an existing Indy 500 champion for a full season drive other than A.J. Foyt, who owned the team when he won his third and fourth Indianapolis 500s. After admitting the team had talked with the 2013 Indy 500 winner for the last few years, team manager Larry Foyt said both parties had reached a point where a deal was possible.

"We both knew each other and had talked and had said if the time ever came available that we could do something together that we would look at it seriously," Foyt said. "So that's really what happened, and I think everybody was just ready for a new challenge, and that's what it was. We know it's going to be a challenge, but we felt like together we could really put something together and start winning again, so that's what brought it together.

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The multiyear deal reunites Kanaan with engineer Eric Cowdin, who was with the Brazilian for his Indy win with KV Racing Technology as well as his 2004 IndyCar championship season with Andretti-Green Racing.

"I'm coming off of a very difficult season, so I think it was a time for us to get together here with – I'm bringing my engineer, Eric Cowdin, which was part of the win with the 500 Chevy, and we're excited," Kanaan said. "It's a great time for me. I think driving for a legend like AJ and all the stories and what I can learn from him still, it will be something that I'm going to take it for the rest of my life. So I'm really excited about it. Hopefully we'll put that 14 car where AJ wants me to put it, which is going to be in first place."

As the team looks to finalize the driver of its second car – Foyt confirmed the team is "trying to figure out what direction to go there" – the team is opting for Kanaan's 16 years of experience in a departure from last year's youth movement that brought in now 25-year-olds Carlos Munoz and Conor Daly. Neither driver is necessarily out of the picture.

"Well, obviously [Tony's] got a lot of experiences, which is going to really pay with this new aero kit and figuring that out quickly, but the one thing I think Tony and I when we started talking about this, we looked at each other, and it's a lot of trust between each other," Foyt explained. "I had to know Tony is not just trying to ride out his last years, that he's going to give 110 percent, and wants to know that we're going to put all our resources into the race team to give him a chance to win, and that's exactly the trust that we had to – I think when we looked each other in the eye, we both knew that this was what we wanted to do and our goals were aligned, and that's why we think it's going to work."

"I think the cars are changing [with the 2018 universal bodywork], so how the team is going to respond to that is basically what we're going to build," echoed Kanaan. "Bringing [Eric] in, I think it's a big help because he knows the way I like to drive. He knows the way I like to set up the car. So I would say for me, it's a big step. We can come in and try to introduce my driving style. Obviously we don't know how the new car is going to perform. We've still got to go test and see how is it going to behave, so everyone is pretty much starting from scratch."