Chip Ganassi Racing will open its doors to fans on Saturday morning from 7am-12pm at its Indianapolis shop for a unique garage sale. Owing to its recent downsizing in IndyCar and IMSA, the team has also made an effort to reduce its stockpile of …
Chip Ganassi Racing will open its doors to fans on Saturday morning from 7am-12pm at its Indianapolis shop for a unique garage sale.
Owing to its recent downsizing in IndyCar and IMSA, the team has also made an effort to reduce its stockpile of spare parts, crew clothing, driver gear, and its inventory of race-used components that have accumulated over the decades.
“CGR will sell a variety of one-of-a-kind items from cars and drivers over the last 10-15 years,” the team wrote. “Items for sale include driver firesuits, select bodywork from its race cars including wings and sidepods, pit crew helmets and more.”
The cashless event doubles as a charitable gathering as “CGR is teaming up with the YMCA of Greater Indianapolis to provide toys to children in need this holiday season. The team is encouraging all fans attending the CGR Garage Sale to bring a new unwrapped toy to donate. Those that donate will receive a pack of exclusive CGR trading cards from 2023 or 2024 while supplies last. Fans are encouraged to bring unwrapped toys for children ranging from newborns to age 15.”
Chip Ganassi Racing and Meyer Shank Racing have finalized the technical staffing for the Jim Meyer- and Mike Shank-owned NTT IndyCar Series team. In a surprise, former Dale Coyne Racing engineer Ross Bunnell, who joined CGR in 2023 as race engineer …
Chip Ganassi Racing and Meyer Shank Racing have finalized the technical staffing for the Jim Meyer- and Mike Shank-owned NTT IndyCar Series team.
In a surprise, former Dale Coyne Racing engineer Ross Bunnell, who joined CGR in 2023 as race engineer for six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon on the No. 9 Honda and is rated by many as one of the brightest engineering talents in the series, has been assigned to MSR with Felix Rosenqvist on the No. 60 Honda.
Dixon and Bunnell earned three wins and placed second in the championship in their first season together, and in 2024, they produced two more wins but slid to sixth in the standings after a rough close to the season.
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Bunnell’s debut with MSR came last Tuesday at The Thermal Club engineering ex-Williams Formula 1 driver Logan Sargeant in the No. 06 MSR Honda. Completing the MSR race engineering group is Angela Ashmore, who worked with Marcus Armstrong at CGR last season, and who signed to drive MSR’s No. 66 Honda.
“Let’s start with Marcus and Angela,” Shank told RACER. “For me, this was one of those things when we knew that we were going to take Marcus on, we worked pretty hard to make sure we kept continuity there. Marcus really likes Angela. I’m just getting to know her, but it seemed to me that it made the most sense, especially if you look at Marcus’s second half of the year, he was really starting to get some momentum. And it made sense to me that we keep as much as that in places we can. Marcus has a lot of confidence in her, and that’s what I need to know.”
Shank was encouraged by what he saw with Bunnell in action.
“Ross is a really good, good guy, and I could tell it by the end of the day at Thermal,” he added. “I could even tell it by the end of the day with Logan with just a lot of similar mentalities to what we have here. I can easily see him working very well with Felix, just the disposition of how Felix is, how Ross is, but also just listening to Ross.
“His confidence and his knowledge of the product just oozes out of him, and that was really good for me to see. Now, ultimately, we’ll see how everyone gets along here. But man, I think it bodes pretty well so far.”
MSR has also appointed Neil Fife, a veteran race engineer who joined the team from Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and worked on MSR’s IMSA GTP program in 2023, as its go-between with CGR.
“That’s an important part for us as the liaison engineer with Ganassi on our side,” Shank said. “He’s making sure everything Ganassi-related to our cars is as it should be. So Neil working with those guys is helpful and Neil will also engineer Helio (Castroneves) when we get to the Speedway.
“We kept him on for special projects after IMSA, and now he moves into this other role, and is also our development guy. Just a humongous amount of experience. Very smart, switched on guy.”
Shank is pleased with how the first outings have gone in the technical alliance with CGR.
“We’d been with Andretti for five years, and it was pretty seamless with them,” he said. “We did that test at the Speedway last month which was our first with Ganassi, and it was very smooth. We had the system down before with Andretti, and it’s headed in the exact same direction with Ganassi.
“We’ve done it a couple times now with Ganassi and they’re taking suggestions on what helps us and we’re asking what we can help on to make things easier for them, and it’s been great. They’re just so practical and easy to deal with, and they brought the full kit of people out for Logan and I couldn’t be more encouraged. They came in with dampers and engineers, we went through lots of things, had a solid pre-run plan that we had worked out, and it’s been great.”
In a storybook ending for Chip Ganassi Racing, the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R of Sebastien Bourdais, Renger van der Zande and Scott Dixon came back from a miserable early race to win Petit Le Mans. With a dramatic dive to the inside of Nick …
In a storybook ending for Chip Ganassi Racing, the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R of Sebastien Bourdais, Renger van der Zande and Scott Dixon came back from a miserable early race to win Petit Le Mans. With a dramatic dive to the inside of Nick Tandy in the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 in Turn 1 with 15m left in the 10-hour race, van der Zande turned around what had looked like a hopeless day to win the last race before CGR exits the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship for the time being.
“I don’t know what to say. It’s just, it’s unbelievable,” said an emotional Bourdais after the victory. “You think you got it, you think you lost it, it comes back around. You never know what’s going on. Five minutes to the end, we think we won it, and then both lights go out. I don’t know … I’m speechless. I can’t be thankful enough for the opportunity to have driven that No. 01 for three years. It’s a bittersweet end, but there’s no better send off, and I’m so grateful.”
To add a bit of last-second drama, the Cadillac, which had run much of the evening with only one headlight, lost it’s headlights completely with under five minutes to go, which would have surely earned a mechanical black flag, but came back on shortly thereafter. They continued to go off intermittently, but were on enough to finish the race.
“There was a bit of disco going on, but I like discos,” laughed van der Zande. “This manual we get from Cadillac is a lot of buttons and a lot of options, so I started to press all kinds of buttons this way, and it was still not good enough. Then it stuck more and more and more, then they told me press the white button. So I pressed the white button, and it worked, so we got the lights back.”
Porsche Penske Motorsports finished second and third, the No. 6 963 finishing ahead of the No. 7. The third-place finish earned the No. 7 squad of Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr, aided by Matt Campbell in the long endurance races, the GTP championship and the Michelin Endurance Cup. Cadillac Racing closed the gap to the No. 6 team, but in the end fell short of breaking up the PPM one-two in the championship.
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“Big hats off to the team. I mean, it’s really as near to perfect, I think, as you can be,” said Cameron. “Really proud to have all the championships, one-two for both cars. Obviously disappointed for the No. 6 to miss out there, but absolutely so, so pleased to have number four for myself, and obviously outstanding for the group.”
What had been shaping up to be a fantastic race between the No. 6 Porsche and the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06 – with the added intrigue of fuel strategy that could have brought the No. 7 PPM Porsche into the equation – was shattered, along with an astounding 4.5h of green flag running, with a three-car incident with just under an hour to go. A collision between the No. 120 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R driven by Jan Heylen and the No. 55 Proton Competition Mustang GT3 of Corey Lewis in Turn 5 left the Mustang sitting on the track facing the wrong direction, with no lights, over the crest of a brow.
Several cars avoided the wrecked Mustang, but Ricky Taylor did not. Grazing the Mustang, Taylor removed a big chunk of the left side of the Acura, ending the team’s chance to win Petit Le Mans yet again. Taylor had taken the lead out of the previous pit stop, but slid off track on cold tires, handing the lead back to Tandy.
That set up a potential four-way fight to the finish between the No. 6 Porsche, the No. 01 Cadillac, the No. 24 BMW M Team RLL M Hybrid V8 and the No. 7 Porsche, but it proved to be Tandy vs. van der Zande fighting to the checker. The BMW in Philip Eng’s hands looked like it might have something to challenge for a podium, but contact with the No. 7 Porsche not only damaged and slowed the M Hybrid V8, but earned a drive-through penalty as well.
CGR’s Cadillac was looking to be out of the fight due to a sensor issue that caused a mechanical black flag. The team solved the problem, but the fix affected the power processing unit and left the No. 01 down on power and also left the car a lap down. The lap was retrieved, but the 4.5h period of green flag running kept them from making any progress. Only the final yellow, which the team expected, brought them back into the fight.
Stalking Tandy, van der Zande finally found an opening. He had a better run out of Turn 12, and as Tandy shifted back to the left after passing a GT car, van der Zande dived to the inside heading into Turn 1. Tandy lost his run to the apex and the position.
“It was the only move I could make. I was behind Tandy for a while, and he was so fast on the straights. Every time they pulled a gap of like, I don’t know, six, seven car lengths, but in the corners we were very fast. We set up the car a lot for Turn 1 and Turn 3. That’s where I could really make up a lot of ground. The car was awesome there,” said van der Zande before praising Tandy.
“When I made the move on Nick, it’s always a two-way street. I think with professionals like him, you can do these kind of moves. At the same time, it’s risky. I think Scott told me I was locking wheels going in.”
The No. 01 crossed the line with van der Zande flashing the lights, 2.948s ahead of the No. 6. While all three drivers have won Petit Le Mans before, it was the first victory at Road Atlanta for Chip Ganassi Racing as it signs off in its run with Cadillac.
The eventual race-winning TDS ORECA landed itself in the right place at the right time ahead of the championship-winning car from Inter Europol. Jake Galstad/Lumen
TDS Racing with Steven Thomas, Mikkel Jensen and Hunter McElrea took the victory in LMP2 in dominating fashion to also claim the Endurance Cup. While polesitter Ben Keating led the early portion of the race, his run ended early. Keating, leading at the time, was passing the No. 20 High Class Racing ORECA LMP2 at Turn 6 and spun, possibly after contact. Tommy Milner in the No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Z06 GT3.R was next on the scene and hit Keating’s No. 2 United Autosports ORECA. Both Keating’s car and the Corvette sustained heavy damage and were taken straight to the paddock. Keating would re-emerge later in the race, but a second crash took the No. 2 out of the race for good.
With McElrea and Jensen closing out the race, the No. 11 was unstoppable, putting gaps on the field at every turn. The final full-course caution brought Riley Motorsports into contact for the LMP2 lead and potentially the championship, but Jensen put the strength that the TDS ORECA had shown all day on full display as he fended off an attack by Felipe Fraga in the No. 74 right after the restart then ran away to a 17.097s victory over Fraga, Gar Robinson and Josh Burdon.
“This one was big because we also won the Endurance Cup, which is my first IMSA season championship,” said Thomas. “I was born in Atlanta, so coming home to Atlanta and winning Road Atlanta means a lot to me. I think that the traffic here for a Bronze is brutal, and it’s like a big puzzle. To me, it’s the most fun race of the year because of the traffic.”
Jensen running away removed any hope of the Riley team of Fraga and Robinson to claim the championship in their rookie year in LMP2. That instead fell to Nick Boulle and Tom Dillman for Inter Europol by PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports. It also gave Boulle the Jim Trueman Award.
After being two laps down, Era Motorsports hauled its way back into the fight as it often does for a third-place finish for the No. 18 and drivers Dwight Merriman, Ryan Dalziel and Connor Zilisch.
In a storybook ending for Chip Ganassi Racing, the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R of Sebastien Bourdais, Renger van der Zande and Scott Dixon came back from a miserable early race to win Petit Le Mans. With a dramatic dive to the inside of Nick …
In a storybook ending for Chip Ganassi Racing, the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R of Sebastien Bourdais, Renger van der Zande and Scott Dixon came back from a miserable early race to win Petit Le Mans. With a dramatic dive to the inside of Nick Tandy in the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 in Turn 1 with 15m left in the 10-hour race, Renger van der Zande turned around what had looked like a hopeless day to win the last race before CGR exits the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship for the time being.
To add a bit of last-second drama, the Cadillac, which had run much of the evening with only one headlight, lost it’s headlights completely with under 5m to go. That would have surely earned a mechanical black flag, but the lights came back on shortly thereafter. They continued to go off intermittently, but were on enough to finish the race.
Porsche Penske Motorsports finished second and third, the No. 6 963 finishing ahead of the No. 7. The third-place finish earned the No. 7 squad of Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr, aided by Matt Campbell in the endurance races, the GTP championship and the Michelin Endurance Cup. Cadillac Racing closed the gap to the No. 6 team, but in the end fell short of breaking up the PPM one-two in the championship.
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The No. 11 TDS Racing ORECA and drivers Steven Thomas, Mikkel Jensen and Hunter McElrea dominated LMP2 after the polesitting No. 2 United Autosports ORECA exited the fight in an early-race crash. TDS denying the Riley Motorsports squad their first victory, as the No. 74 of Gar Robinson, Felipe Fraga and Josh Burdon finished second, also preserved the championship lead for Nick Boulle, Tom Dillmann and Inter Europol by PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports.
Jordan Pepper in the No. 19 Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2 held off a charge by Daniel Serra in the No. 62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3 to take the GTD PRO victory for himself, Frank Perera and Mirko Bortolotti. The No. 23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Ross Gunn, Alex Riberas and Roman De Angelis finished third, which wasn’t enough to wrest the title from Laurin Heinrich and AO Racing.
The No. 77 AO Racing Porche 911 GT3R had a rough race, encountering an electrical issue that affected shifting. Fixing the problem put the car down six laps and Heinrich, with Michael Christensen and Julien Andlauer, finished 11th. Had Gunn been able to take second in the race, the championship would have been his. In the end, the points from Saturday’s qualifying where Heinrich scored pole made the difference.
Conquest Racing was a surprise winner in GTD, Albert Costa Balboa taking advantage of a late caution to get the No. 34 Ferrari 296 into position to attack Loris Spinelli in the No. 78 Forte Racing Lamborghini Huracan and earn victory for himself, Manny Franco and Cedric Sbirrazzuoli. Winward Racing took the championship with Russell Ward and Philip Ellis and, along with Indy Dontje, the Michelin Endurance Cup, with a ninth-place finish.
In the morning, it was Santino Ferrucci atop the 11 drivers running at Friday’s Indianapolis Motor Speedway NTT IndyCar Series test, then it was Josef Newgarden who took the point, and in the end, it was Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou who went to …
In the morning, it was Santino Ferrucci atop the 11 drivers running at Friday’s Indianapolis Motor Speedway NTT IndyCar Series test, then it was Josef Newgarden who took the point, and in the end, it was Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou who went to the front after producing a 224.342mph lap in the No. 10 Honda to lead the field at the close of the day-long outing, the first for IndyCar’s new hybrid-spec powertrain at the 2.5-mile oval.
Newgarden was second in the No. 2 Team Penske Chevy (223.973mph), and a surprise in third—Dale Coyne Racing’s Rinus VeeKay, who agreed to test the car 24 hours prior—in the No. 18 Honda (223.383mph).
Graham Rahal was fourth in the No. 45 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda (222.650mph), Marcus Ericsson was fifth in the No. 28 Andretti Global Honda (222.324mph), and Helio Castroneves was sixth in the No. 06 Meyer Shank Racing Honda (222.075mph).
Making his debut for Ed Carpenter Racing, Alexander Rossi was seventh in the No. 20 Chevy (220.504mph), ahead of Ferrucci in the No. 14 AJ Foyt Racing Chevy (220.149mph), Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Conor Daly in the No. 78 Chevy (219.997mph), Ryan Hunter-Reay in the No. 23 Dreyer & Reinbold Racing Chevy (219.955mph), and Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard, who was 11th and last in the No. 5 Chevy (219.566mph).
The energy recovery system, which adds 60hp on demand and a hike in weight with a 105-pound increase to the minimum weight of the Dallara DW12 chassis, was introduced at Mid-Ohio in July and made its long-awaited debut at the Speedway on Friday.
“It was good,” Palou told RACER. “It was a bit different with the hybrid. It was, in some areas, a little bit worse, obviously, just because of the weight. I think it’s a little bit tougher to get very close to the car in front. I’m not saying it’s impossible; like, you can overtake, but you can feel the car is a little bit heavier, and doesn’t love it when you lose some downforce.
“But on the same note, on the hybrid, it actually helps quite a lot. I think it made it quite fun to be in a group and to try and deploy in areas where you could see that they were not deploying, and then suddenly you get a big momentum and you can overtake. It’s testing. You never know if you have new tires and they have too-many-laps tires, and that’s why you feel super strong. So far, I think it was quite good.
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“Actually, it was very fun. On the team side, we just went through some ideas to try and get more speed. We know that we struggled this year with speed, so we were just trying to get a bit more to see if we can fight for the race win next year.”
Drivers used the paddles on their steering wheels to harvest energy with the fast-charging supercapacitor-based ERS on the straights—usually while in a tow—to get the extra 60hp to deploy at the time of their choosing.
“In qualifying, I think it’ll be tricky to know what we should do if we recharge and deploy every lap, or maybe we don’t recharge and just deploy like a little each lap so we don’t lose too much speed,” Palou said. “I think it’ll be interesting and I think everybody’s thinking the same thing; I don’t think anybody knows what to do yet.
“[The race could be] very easy. When you get a draft, if you cannot overtake, you can just recharge a little bit and then hopefully use it on exit. But if you’re leading, it’s very tough to recharge. I would say you can lose one mile an hour on average at the end of the lap if you’re recharging and not deploying. It’ll be tough to be leading and recharging without getting overtaken, which I think will make it interesting. It’ll be actually fun.
“It’s not dangerous like I think some people at the beginning were a bit concerned of — on a superspeedway going at 230mph and recharging a little bit — [no impact on safety at all]. Honestly, it’s not a huge deal. We recharge a lot, then you can feel it, but it’s not crazy. It’s not like lifting the foot out of the throttle.”
IndyCar’s newest three-time champion, polesitter at the 2023 Indy 500, says he didn’t notice the mechanical drag caused by the ERS on the engine’s acceleration down the long straights either.
“Obviously it’s not helping, but as a driver, you don’t really feel that,” Palou added. “It’s also very tough to say, because you don’t know which engine maps everybody’s running. Nobody’s running qualifying maps like we do in May, right? So the speeds were not amazing today. I expect the speeds next year to be a bit lower, just because we’re carrying more weight.
“It won’t be anything that people will notice a lot, or we will notice. We don’t feel slow. It still feels really, really fast, so maybe we lose, I don’t know, 0.5mph average for us, but it’s really small. I was encouraged a lot by the test, to be honest.”
Felipe Drugovich made a fast impression in his NTT IndyCar Series testing debut with Chip Ganassi Racing on Monday. The 24-year-old Brazilian fired around the rolling 15-turn Barber Motorsports Park road course with a best of 1m07.631s, which was a …
Felipe Drugovich made a fast impression in his NTT IndyCar Series testing debut with Chip Ganassi Racing on Monday. The 24-year-old Brazilian fired around the rolling 15-turn Barber Motorsports Park road course with a best of 1m07.631s, which was a few tenths under the time set by Ganassi’s Alex Palou at a previous test with IndyCar’s hybrid engine package.
“It was a great day,” Drugovich, the 2022 Formula 2 champion and Aston Martin F1 test driver, told RACER. “Just getting to know the car, getting used to how the car feels, which is, I can say, pretty different to anything I’ve ever driven. Not in a bad way – it’s just quite different. The steering feel, and tires and engine. It took a few runs to get used to it, and the whole day went pretty well. In the afternoon, we went through more sets of tires just to get a few reads on some setup changes that they wanted to do, and everything went well. We managed to manage to test quite a few things, and I enjoyed it. That’s the most important thing.”
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The Ganassi team was impressed with Drugovich’s physical conditioning: the car’s high weight and high downforce, mixed with an absence of power steering, tends to leave first-time IndyCar testers physically exhausted.
“To be fair, I think we can put any driver in a Formula 4 car at Barber and they’re still going to be tired at the end of the day, so it’s, it’s a quite a physical track,” he said. “But yeah, it was a long time that I last drove a non-power steering car, and that gave me a hard time during the day. But obviously, we tried to stay prepared and ready for anything. So if one day I’ll be racing in IndyCar, I need to prepare a lot more there, but overall, there were no big issues. And obviously, having driven with Formula 1 quite a few times, my neck is quite okay, but here at Barber with his car, it’s very physical.”
Although Ganassi does not have any openings in its team for 2025, the squad used its last evaluation test day to get a feel for Drugovich’s pace and feedback.
“You never know when you’re when you’re going to have an opening, and you don’t always have a chance to test people when you do have an opening,” said Ganassi performance director Chris Simmons. “So it’s good to get this under our belts and keep Felipe in our contact list. And certainly, I think he showed the speed to be able to join the IndyCar Series in the future and do a real good job wherever he lands.”
Drugovich hasn’t done a lot of racing since completing his run to the 2022 F2 title. A seat with the Vector Sport European Le Mans Series LMP2 outfit has been a welcome development in 2024, as was another sports car outing at Le Mans with Cadillac in the Hypercar class, but the Brazilian has spent most of the last two seasons on the sidelines waiting for his next open-wheel racing opportunity.
Leaving Barber, Drugovich was a big fan of all he experienced in the No. 11 Ganassi Honda.
“I think that it was a good day for everything,” he said. “Trying out new things on the car, and for me to getting to grips with this car, getting the feeling, showing [the team] what I can do, and also me getting to know them and a little bit better.
“I think if, in the future, I have an opportunity to race for them, I will be very happy to do that. So many championships. It’s always a pleasure to work with teams like that. I enjoyed the people and it’s a good environment. It would be very cool to one day be with them.”
NTT IndyCar Series champions Chip Ganassi Racing will test 2022 Formula 2 champion Felipe Drugovich at Barber Motorsports Park on Sept. 30. Andretti Global will also give Indy NXT race winner Jamie Chadwick her first IndyCar run at the same test. …
NTT IndyCar Series champions Chip Ganassi Racing will test 2022 Formula 2 champion Felipe Drugovich at Barber Motorsports Park on Sept. 30. Andretti Global will also give Indy NXT race winner Jamie Chadwick her first IndyCar run at the same test.
“We’ve received approval today from IndyCar to test him,” CGR managing director Mike Hull told RACER. “With the way IndyCar has the testing rules structured to test and evaluate drivers, it made sense to connect with Felipe and get him in one of our cars.”
The Ganassi team does not have any vacancies in its downsized three-car roster for 2025, so the Brazilian isn’t vying for a race seat with the team. Having tested 2021 F2 runner-up Robert Schwarzman and been impressed with his speed and feedback, Hull expects more of the same from Drugovich, who serves as test and reserve driver for Aston Martin F1 team.
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“We wanted to test him a year ago and we’re catching up on that,” Hull said. “Indirectly, we were introduced to Drugovich last year at Le Mans and were impressed with him up close and personal. We want to get to know him and we think it’s worth doing.”
After Drugovich, Hull anticipates giving another young driver their first IndyCar test during the offseason.
“We still have the ability to test an Indy NXT driver because of the regulations,” he said. “So we’ll probably do that before the end of the year.”
Chip Ganassi Racing has started the process of downsizing from five cars to three for the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series. Team leadership met with select crew members at its Indianapolis-based shop Tuesday morning to inform them of their release, which …
Chip Ganassi Racing has started the process of downsizing from five cars to three for the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series.
Team leadership met with select crew members at its Indianapolis-based shop Tuesday morning to inform them of their release, which comes as a result of Penske Entertainment’s upcoming charter program, which limits each team to a maximum of three charter agreements. Without the cap on charters, RACER understands CGR would not be cutting entries from its IndyCar team.
Due to the charter restriction, CGR knew it would need to cull two cars from its IndyCar program, and with the upcoming departure of its factory Cadillac Racing effort, the team found itself with more staff than racing projects to deploy its personnel. The formation of a new two-car Indy NXT program will see a blend of IMSA and IndyCar staff re-assigned to run the cars next season, and for those who were released, members of the back-to-back championship-winning team will be coveted by a number of IndyCar squads and should be able to find new teams within days.
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“Because of changes that are happening in the industry and with our organization specifically, Chip Ganassi Racing needed to right-size the team as we move forward,” the team said in a statement provided to RACER. “The decisions did not come without anguish, but it puts Chip Ganassi Racing in a better position as we begin preparations to defend our IndyCar Series championship in 2025.”
The new PREMA Racing team has been on a hiring spree as it prepares for its debut, and with the AJ Foyt Racing team looking to move its second car from Texas to its shop next to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, local employment opportunities are growing.
The only thing Barry Wanser failed to do on Sunday afternoon at Nashville Speedway was hold back the tears that were welling in his eyes. He’d just clinched the third NTT IndyCar Series championship in four seasons with Alex Palou and the No. 10 …
The only thing Barry Wanser failed to do on Sunday afternoon at Nashville Speedway was hold back the tears that were welling in his eyes.
He’d just clinched the third NTT IndyCar Series championship in four seasons with Alex Palou and the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda entry he leads. One year ago, when Palou and the No. 10 crew were celebrating their second championship at Portland International Raceway, Wanser was missing. More accurately, he was missing from the event and the joyous revelry because he was at home in Indiana, facing the scariest challenge of his life.
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A few weeks earlier, cancer was found in his mouth and tongue, and with his driver on the cusp of winning a second IndyCar title, Wanser wanted to wait until the IndyCar championship was completed before tending to his own needs. Thankfully, his doctor interceded; Wanser informed the team that his season was over. Battling cancer needed to start immediately, and that meant skipping Portland and the finale at Laguna Seca to perform surgery and commence chemotherapy.
Palou and the No. 10 did their best to keep Wanser in the loop, and to have him there in spirit with his headshot placed on paddles that were placed on each of the Ganassi timing stands. But the excitement wasn’t the same without their car leader. And that’s where the tears and overwhelming emotion on display from Wanser and his teammates in victory lane on Sunday told a tale of brother and sisterhood that goes much deeper than wins and trophies.
Even when he was absent, Wanser remained a huge part of the No. 10 team. Michael L. Levitt/Motorsport Images
Free of cancer, back where he belonged, Wanser stood at the back of the No. 10 Honda, surveyed the packed scene with his crew and driver and colleagues, and his wife Laurie, and was struck by the special nature of what they’d achieved, something that wasn’t guaranteed for the New York native last year when surviving cancer was his sole priority.
“I just I don’t know what to say; I haven’t focused on myself, just the team, but it’s pretty special to be here in person,” Wanser told RACER. “It’s just a pleasure racing with his team and our great people and Alex. It’s awesome. But now I need to let it sink in because a year ago, I had my first surgery.”
Wanser couldn’t speak immediately following the procedure that cut the cancer from his mouth, and while his voice was soon heard, his post-surgery experience was one of intense and often excruciating pain. He wanted to return to work as quickly as possible, but team owner Chip Ganassi and managing director Mike Hull made sure Wanser’s offseason was spent with a slow restoration of health and energy as his lone task to accomplish.
Naturally, his warm and friendly ways were missed at the shop, but Wanser put the extra time to good use and was ready to return to the timing stand for the opening race in March. All of his subsequent cancer screenings have been negative, and while it took a bit longer than he wanted to reclaim all of his strength, Palou and crew chief Ricky Davis and the rest of the No. 10 team had their team manager, race strategist, and friend sitting at his post, directing the effort, and coordinating the program as it marched to its third IndyCar crown in four years.
“This is pretty special,” said Wanser, who’s been part of 15 of Ganassi’s 16 IndyCar titles. “We can’t get through our difficulties in life without support and support from our teams and our racing community, and it means a lot to me.”
Wanser is a hero and role model of humble excellence to many in the paddock. As his wife approached him in victory lane, the sight of his own hero drawing near was enough to make him surrender to those tears. His greatest support system was finally there.
“And my wife Laurie as well,” he said as his voice softened. “She’s my rock.”
It was an interesting and extended evening at Nashville Superspeedway as rain delayed the running of the 60-minute final practice by two hours, and with the condensed schedule that remained, drivers put in work to apply rubber to the second lane and …
It was an interesting and extended evening at Nashville Superspeedway as rain delayed the running of the 60-minute final practice by two hours, and with the condensed schedule that remained, drivers put in work to apply rubber to the second lane and moved into a shortened 15-minute outing.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon was fastest in the No. 9 Honda with a lap of 195.621mph and had Meyer Shank Racing’s David Malukas behind him in the No. 66 Honda (194.087mph) and Andretti Global’s Colton Herta in third with the No. 26 Honda (193.879mph).
The quick run was remarkable in two ways. Polesitter Kyle Kirkwood crashed with less than three minutes to go when a supposed suspension failure occurred.
“I’m all good. Something broke,” he said.
The other was the absence of time for teams to properly benchmark the longevity of Firestone’s new alternate tires, which were used sparingly in earlier sessions. As a result, few of the 27 entries will head into the championship-deciding final race on Sunday with a real understanding of how long the alternate tires will last per stint, and which aerodynamic or suspension settings will work best for both the primary compound and the alternate. As such, the 206-lap race, which goes green at 3:30pm ET on NBC, will have a greater wild card element than expected.
“CGR will sell a variety of one-of-a-kind items from cars and drivers over the last 10-15 years,” the team wrote. “Items for sale include driver firesuits, select bodywork from its race cars including wings and sidepods, pit crew helmets and more.”
The cashless event doubles as a charitable gathering as “CGR is teaming up with the YMCA of Greater Indianapolis to provide toys to children in need this holiday season. The team is encouraging all fans attending the CGR Garage Sale to bring a new unwrapped toy to donate. Those that donate will receive a pack of exclusive CGR trading cards from 2023 or 2024 while supplies last. Fans are encouraged to bring unwrapped toys for children ranging from newborns to age 15.”
