By Andrew Charman

Tony Kanaan knows he can end this coming weekend on a very big high. All he has to do is come away from this weekend's Indy Racing League event at California's Fontana track with a fourth place finish or better, and he will be crowned the 2004 Series Champion with a race to spare.

Yet despite the fact that Kanaan carries a 75-point championship lead into Sunday's Toyota Indy 400, and is currently on an amazing 13-race streak of top-five finishes, the driver of the #11 Andretti-Green Racing Dallara-Honda is taking nothing for granted. “I don't want to talk about the championship yet,” Kanaan said this week, “but I do have the confidence that I can do well. I don't want to break the streak of 13. I want to make maybe 15 top-five finishes. I think if I finish in the top five one more time, the championship is ours. I'm still going to Fontana with the mentality that I went to Chicago with, which is let's do our thing and do our best, and we'll collect the result at the end.”

Kanaan this year is part of an unprecedented four car squad at Andretti-Green, and admits that this has helped his championship bid. “I think with the organization we have, at the beginning of the year people actually started to doubt us, saying, 'Actually, they can actually make it worse instead of better.' I think we proved to everybody that it's a big advantage if you know how to work with your team-mates.”

Andretti-Green's form, however, has thrown up a situation that could easily become difficult, in that Kanaan's closest rival for the title is his own team-mate, last year's top rookie Dan Wheldon. But Kanaan insists that the team is still completely sharing information, and he is definitely not keeping anything back from Wheldon. “One thing nobody can say is we're having team orders because, you know, I could have won the championship right after Nazareth if they had called Dan in Pikes Peak and Nazareth to let me finish ahead of him, which didn't happen. The last race I could have finished second. Could have called Bryan and asked Bryan to let me by. Didn't happen.

“We're racing. There is nothing I am going to hide from my teammates just because we're fighting for the championship. I think it's a matter of my principles first, and the team's as well. It's different sponsors that we need to represent. I want to win in a fair situation. I don't want anybody to give it to me. I want to get it because I'm capable to get it.”

Third in the championship is Buddy Rice, and mathematically the Rahal-Letterman driver, who has matured into a real force this season, still has a chance of the championship, thanks greatly to a very strong mid-season. But he will be eliminated from the title battle simply by Kanaan starting on Sunday and will focus instead on overcoming his 20-point deficit to Wheldon.

Others have only a race win to aim for, and none will be aiming harder than the Penske squad. The Captain's team has had a very poor season by their standards, the year having gone downhill right after Sam Hornish Jr's win in the opening round. But the Penske squad will also be aware that the last two races at Fontana have both been won by Hornish, and he will want badly to make it a hat trick.

The Toyota Indy 400 takes the green flag at around 3pm Eastern Time on Sunday, which is 8pm in the UK. Check back to crash.net for the full story.