Do you believe in luck?

“You got lucky!”

“There is no such thing as luck!”

Ever heard either of those? Ever used one? Or the other? Or both? We all have. But is there such a thing as luck?

In every form of motorsports there is one race that is considered the holy grail – the one that you must win before you can consider your racing resume complete. In F1, it’s Monaco. In drag racing it’s the U.S. Nationals, colloquially referred to as “Indy.” In NASCAR, it’s the Daytona 500. In Indycar, it’s the race that the series is named for – the Indy 500.

It took the late Dale Earnhardt 20 attempts to win Daytona. Many openly wondered if the man who had won a record 7 NASCAR championships (tied with Richard Petty) would ever win Daytona. It’s not like he never came close to winning. He finished second five times. There were many races where he was leading with less than 5 laps remaining only to have an engine let go or a tire go down or get caught up in a wreck. He was, in the vernacular of NASCAR, snakebit. But in his 20^th attempt, he finally got it done.

The same can be said for Indycar’s Tony Kanaan. It took him 12 years to win Indy. Along the way, he had more than his share of “close, but no cigar” finishes or, in the case of Indy, “close, but no bottle of milk.”

Kanaan is an extremely likeable racer and one of my favourites. He is respected by his peers and a favourite with the fans. In 2004, in the days leading up to the 500, Kanaan and a group of other Indycar drivers visited Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis and met with children there. One of the children was 15-year-old Andrea Irwin who was in a coma awaiting brain surgery. Kanaan always carried a good luck medallion that his mother had given him for protection when he raced. When he met Irwin’s family, he gave the medallion to her mother saying, “She needs this more than I do.”

Irwin survived her surgery and in the ensuing years Kanaan won many races but could never close the deal at Indy. His string of bad luck was becoming legendary, just like Earnhardt’s.

In 2013, Irwin, now 24 and healthy, decided that Kanaan needed the same kind of luck that he had given her 9 years earlier and returned the medallion. Kanaan kept it in a pocket under his firesuit when he raced on Sunday. And, after 12 years of trying, he finally won.

Was it luck, skill, hard work, some combination of them all or just a coincidence? Certainly, Kanaan is a skilled and talented racer. He works hard at being the best as do the teams he has driven for over the years. Yet, despite everything that he had going for him, Indy had always eluded him. Is it possible that a small, "lucky" medallion could have tipped the scale?

They say that you need to be lucky to be good and good to be lucky. Is there such a thing as luck or do we make our own? Was Tony Kanaan rewarded for his act of kindness 9 years ago? I don’t know the answer. All I know is that I’m glad Andrea Irwin's health is better and that she doesn’t need the medallion anymore. I'm also glad that she sent the medallion back. And I’m really glad that T-K finally got a much deserved win. It just goes to show that, whether you believe in luck or not, sometimes the good guys finish first.