INDIANAPOLIS — Kevin Kalkhoven, the crew co-owner of Tony Kanaan’s Indianapolis 500-winning entry in 2013, died Tuesday. He was 77.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway introduced Kalkhoven’s demise and didn’t element a trigger.

Kalkhoven was co-owner with Jimmy Vasser of the KV Racing Expertise-SH Racing Chevrolet that Kanaan drove to an emotional victory.

Kalkhoven additionally performed a significant function within the reunification of North American open-wheel racing.

“Motorsports has misplaced one in every of its true leaders,” Indianapolis Motor Speedway proprietor Roger Penske mentioned. “Kevin Kalkhoven had an ideal ardour for open-wheel racing, and his imaginative and prescient and assist helped information the game via some turbulent occasions.”

Mark Miles, president and CEO of Penske Leisure Corp., mentioned he met Kalkoven in 2013.

“In some ways, profitable that 12 months’s Indianapolis 500 with Tony Kanaan should have been the spotlight of his racing life. I am positive he did not come again all the way down to Earth for a lot of months,” Miles mentioned.

Kalkhoven fielded a crew that earned seven victories between 2003 and 2016 within the Champ Automotive World Collection and the NTT IndyCar collection.

Kalkhoven, a local of Adelaide, Australia, joined Gerald Forsythe and Paul Gentilozzi to buy the property of the CART open-wheel racing collection in 2003 and kind the Champ Automotive World Collection.

In February 2008, Kalkhoven and then-IndyCar collection and Indianapolis Motor Speedway CEO Tony George accomplished intensive negotiations that reunified North American open-wheel racing after 12 years of two competing collection.