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"\n\n It's just before 10 am, Sunday morning, two hours before gentlemen, start your engines, and Tony Kanaan is already behind the wheel, revving his engines. He's driving a golf cart. The little four-seater, wheels the size of Frisbees, darts through the race-day crowd at what must be its top speed\u201410, maybe 15 miles an hour. People are side-stepping to safety as Tony's assistant Misty calls out for them to move, and although many look momentarily annoyed to be inconvenienced by yet another VIP d-bag in a golf cart\u2014really, the class divide here is staggering\u2014nearly everyone brightens up when they see the driver. \"It's Tony!\" a guy says to his wife. \"Holy shit, Tony Kanaan,\" another guy says to no one in particular. \"Good luck out there, Tony\" everyone else says to the dust left in the cart's track.\n\n Kanaan is, to put it in what I'm sure are generic New Yorker terms, a fan favorite. The guy's not an underdog exactly; he's exceptionally good, finishing in the top five in three previous Indys. But through some fluke of luck, some weird ripple in the Indianapolis cosmos, he's just straight up never won. He got as high as second during last year's race, before finishing 11th. Everyone seems to be pulling for him this time, especially since he's lost two separate sponsors in the last year. The KVRT team picked him up at the 11th hour this season, making his appearance at the race today\u2014his 10th consecutive Indy 500\u2014just barely possible.\n\n But right now he's driving a golf cart, and he's going really, ridiculously fast. He doesn't even seem to be vaguely annoyed to be chauffeuring himself. He drives hunched over, one hand at 12 o'clock, one hand on his knee. He is not averse to making really sharp turns. I'm in the cart behind him, driven by another of Kanaan's assistants, and I'm holding onto the side rail like a friggin' infant. For most of the five minute ride, from Kanaan's tent to his team's suite in bleachers, I am 100 percent sure we're going to maim someone. (Miraculously, we did not.)\n\n When we arrive at the team's suite, Kanaan doesn't waste a second. He walks in to a series of strong, forearm-holding, two-handed shakes, an endless receiving line of them. He poses for photos. Everyone's speaking Portuguese (he's from Brazil.) It's amazing to see this glad-handing on the day of the race, the biggest day of his year, a day that could cement his career or, quite literally, end his life. But Kanaan feels grateful just to be here. When he's shaking hands, Misty tells me, it's with his sincerest appreciation\u2014these people put their money behind him, and they didn't have to do that. He's smiling ear-to-ear. When he finally finishes, when everybody has been greeted, when enough photographs are taken, Kanaan heads back down to his golf cart and speeds off into the crowd, back to the tent to prepare for the race.\n\n I took to heart some of the wisdom our own Dan Riley picked up last year, and picked one driver to follow the whole time. Obviously, I went with Kanaan. I very nearly phoned in a bet on him too\u2014sports are always more fun when you can fantasize about getting bottle service if your guy wins\u2014but I decided against it, on the grounds that I don't really know the first thing about racing. But that's one of the really amazing things about the Indy: The excitement is inherent to the race. You don't have to have a multi-generational history of fandom to get why it's thrilling. It helps, sure, but spend five minutes watching those cars shoot around the track and you won't be able to take your eyes off it. Just ask Patrick Dempsey\u2014who, by the way, is his hair stylist hiding somewhere nearby? Because the guy looks impeccable. He's a legitimate race fan, watching the cars go by out of the corner of his eye while he makes small talk. Or Chris McDonald, who stands on the balcony smoking a cigar, listening in on giant headphones to the radio dialogue of the drivers and their teams, totally transfid, unmovable for the last 50 laps. Or the guys from Band of Horses, who played a full set at the GQ/Izod party the night before, and spend what seems to be the entire race (it's three hours) facing the north curve of the track. (At one point, Dempsey expresses regret that they couldn't make it. I tell him that they're here, on the other balcony, and he leaves immediately to seek them out.)\n\n Meanwhile, down on the track, in a car moving more than 200 miles per hour, Tony Kanaan is jockeying for a spot up front. He started in 22nd position and fought his way to the top five. And when a mishap in the pit sends him back again, more than 20 cars from first place, he fights his way forward a second time. It's miraculous, improbable, nerve-racking. Danica Patrick, the GoDaddy girl, another fan favorite, spends some time in first place, too, before losing her position. In the end, Dan Wheldon and JR Hildebrand fight for the trophy, and goddammit, for a long time it looks like it's going to be Hildebrand, which would have been ridiculous because the guy's a rookie, but he slides into the marbles on the fourth turn of the final lap and actually skids into second place as Wheldon passes him to win. It's the stuff that movies are made of (Hoosiers is one, actually) and you can see why the crowd goes nuts at the end. The Indy 500 is like one of those basketball games where the score's tied and somebody tosses the ball from half-court at the buzzer. Every single race is like that, because there's 33 cars and they spend the entire time neck-to-friggin'-neck, cars inches apart. You should have seen the crowd when that end-game shit happened: the great, collective gasp, the screaming applause that followed it. That applause never seemed to conclude. People applauded when the cars were pulling back into their pits. They applauded when Wheldon was drinking his milk. They applauded when he was hugging his teammates. People like to clap. They like winning.\n\n Kanaan, of course, doesn't win. He finishes in 4th, and it's bittersweet for everyone. Word from his crew is that he's pumped up, excited. It's another great finish, another high mark on his career. And you want to doubt that, you really do. You expect to see the guy crying into his hands. Nobody wants to be 4th\u2014nobody even wants to be 2nd. But strangely, it's totally believable. After all, this is a guy that gets off pushing a golf cart to its limits. You can imagine what it feels like to be in a IndyCar. And if you can't, here's the closest you can get to experiencing it:\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/indianapolis-500-tony-kanaan>