Tony Kanaan calls for change to prevent too much ‘pack racing’

Kanaan doesn't think IndyCars can 'pack race' too often, which the competition yellows create.

IndyCar racer Tony Kanaan, who accidentally caused a wreck for several other drivers at Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday, apologized for the incident and also called for a change in IndyCar format, in the post-race press conference.

"I don’t do those kind of things. I race people clean, and I want people to race me clean," said Kanaan, defending himself. "It was definitely an honest mistake. You never, especially in a place like this, crash people on purpose. And I’ve been around it way too long to do any silly things like that, and if I did, it was really a mistake, and I apologize for it."

As a result, Kanaan thinks it’s time things change in IndyCar racing.

"I think it’s pretty obvious we can’t," he said when asked if races should continue in this form. "I mean, what you have — five cars finished the race? Six cars? Plus in our type of cars, we can’t do that. That’s my opinion."

Kanaan thinks things end up getting a bit too congested at times.

"At those kinds of speeds, if somebody is getting a blister we can’t afford to have a problem like that," he said. "Do I agree with that? I have to because it’s putting everybody else’s safety in check, right? It takes one guy to have a problem, and he will take five guys out, as we saw."

Kanaan thinks there need to be fewer competition yellows with that many cars on the track.

"So I think it was OK [to have competition yellows], but the thing is when you have a pack race, the longer you go green, the better it is," he said. "You keep bringing yellows back and you put the whole pack back together, and that was the problem."