Tony Kanaan thought that his 317 race consecutive start streak was going to come to an end this past March. See, Kanaan wanted to race full time again for the 2020 NTT IndyCar Series season. Unfortunately, the funding that it would take to make that happen was thin. So, instead of run races here and there, he and AJ Foyt Racing came up with a plan.

“T.K’s last lap” would take place on all of the ovals this season. Instead of running all 17 originally scheduled races, Kanaan would just run at Indianapolis, Texas, Richmond, Iowa and Gateway. But, with the COVID-19 break that caused the series to skip their first nine races in 2020 and lose several others, Richmond was left off in wake of that but another race was added to Iowa. With Barber, COTA, Long Beach, Richmond and both Belle Isle races being canceled, Kanaan’s percentage of races run this season actually grew.

So did his chances of winning Saturday night’s Genesys 300 (8 p.m. ET, NBC, INDYCAR Radio Network). Kanaan, has always been good at the Texas Motor Speedway. The popular Brazilian driver won this race in the early 2000’s to go along with five top six finishes, four of those on the podium, in his last six starts on the high speed Texas oval.

Now, with the schedule shake up, instead of him having to miss the first five races of the year while everyone else got up to speed, he gets to take part in race No. 1. The odd situation that everyone is in, so is he. He’s not coming in with one hand tied behind his back.

Also, the awkwardness of everyone being in St. Pete and preparing to race, then being told right before practice that the weekend was off, well he thinks that the situation, as weird as this sounds, could be an advantage for him.

“To be honest, I was mentally prepared already because my first real race was going to be the 500,” Kanaan said on Monday. “My mind was already set for May. I only really had to delay, what, a couple of weeks from what I was originally scheduled to do. For me, I think it wasn’t as hard as for the other guys that were already in St. Pete ready to go.”

The other guys agree.

“Yeah, I think for all of us it was pretty strange,” five-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon said. “I think we geared up. We had the off-season, done all the pre-season testing, all of us had made it to St. Pete. You kind of had all that pent-up tension to get going. You wake up a day later and of course everything could change.”

His new Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Marcus Ericsson echoed that.

“It’s been a long and strange off-season already, a long off-season in INDYCAR,” the second year driver said. “Then, like Scott (Dixon) said, we were ready in St. Pete, it was called off in the last minute. Then it’s about preparing yourself even more.”

Kanaan, was already preparing that his first race would be on May 24, not March 13. Now, his first race is the same with everyone’s on June 6.

The popular Brazilian driver said that Saturday is going to be weird without fans there because signing autographs and being accessible to fans is what made Tony Kanaan, Tony Kanaan. Then, factor in him never being in the cockpit with the Aeroscreen on, a limited amount of practice, everyone being out of the race car for nine months and the new rules limiting laps on a stint of tires, he thinks the race could be largely unknown.

“Regardless of how we had the package, how did they change the track, it was always a very challenging place for various different reasons over the years,” Kanaan said of Texas. “Used to be a pack race, then not. It was a very difficult racetrack on tires, extremely hard on the tires. It was a difficult race to race.

“I don’t think I can pick one particular thing to say Texas is difficult. I think it’s going to be a nerve-wracking day. We cannot even call it a weekend any more because it’s a single-day event. Everybody has been out of the car for quite a few months. I’ve been out of the car for eight months myself. I never actually driven the car with the windscreen. It will be challenging.

“This is a challenging time. I think the race is still going to be great. It’s a fast oval. Apart from Indy, I think it’s one of the fastest we go. We’ll see. Happy to be back, though.”

Kanaan, will hope to end a long winless drought that extends to the 2014 season finale. He hopes to do so for the home team at AJ Foyt Racing who themselves is riding a long winless streak that dates back to April 2013 on the streets of Long Beach.