IndyCar 2014 Review: P14 - Charlie Kimball

Marshall Pruett says…

Plenty of factors and considerations are made while concocting these reviews. Of the two metrics I use on a regular basis – the company a driver keeps in the standings, and where they finished last year--it would be easy to conclude Charlie Kimball aka “Charlie Murphy” regressed in 2014.

Kimball broke through to win his first race in 2013, and put in a strong body of work to claim ninth in the Drivers’ championship. It set the Californian up for one of two outcomes this season, and unfortunately for Chuck, it didn’t involve a move deeper inside the top-10. Instead, Kimball dropped from ninth to 14th, and despite having the full might of Ganassi’s four-car program to lean on, found himself behind the mercurial Josef Newgarden and Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing's single-car effort.

Dropping five spots in the championship and getting beaten by a kid on minuscule budget could be a humbling outcome for Kimball, and I hope he takes it to heart, but a deeper look at his results reveal there’s more to Charlie’s season than just his place in the final standings or who finished directly ahead of him.

The Novo Nordisk-sponsored driver spent his first two seasons at Ganassi without making much of an impression on the race track. Nice kid, great sponsor, fantastic salesman for his sponsor’s product, but nothing to worry about once the green flag waved. In 2013, and with Ganassi dropping down to three full-time cars, Kimball found an extra gear we didn’t know existed. 10 top-10s, including his win at Mid-Ohio and a podium at Pocono seemed to indicate he was finding the swagger that had been missing.

A return to four cars in 2014 could have taken some of the attention away from Kimball, and even with new teammate Ryan Briscoe recording an underwhelming season in the No. 8 Ganassi Chevy, the Aussie still managed to finish three spots ahead of Kimball in 11th. If there’s one glaring item in Chuck’s season to take away as a positive—as positive as you can be about finishing 14th in a Ganassi car – it’s his increased competitiveness.

Through 2013, Kimball was usually in the race but not part of the race. Sure, he had plenty of top-10s last year, but most were finishes of sixth or worse, and he rarely played a role in the battle up front. When he wasn’t inside the top-10, he was usually hard to find deep in the pack. In 2014, and despite Ganassi’s slow start to the season, Kimball managed to turn things up a bit, recording four finishes inside the top-5. He had a total of four top-5s in his first three seasons.

Unlike those first three championship campaigns, Kimball was racier on a more consistent basis. Unfortunately, when he wasn’t running hard inside the top-10, he was usually the victim of bad luck, not to mention a lightning rod for Chevy’s engine problems. 2014 was a boom-or-bust year for Charlie, and although he ultimately placed 14th in the standings, I’d argue he was driving better and showed more aggression than in his breakout season last year. So if he raced harder this year, why did he fall so far in the championship?

Kimball’s greatest weakness is continually exposed in road and street course qualifying. Forget qualifying inside the Firestone Fast Six; Charlie only made it inside the Fast 12 on one occasion—the final road course event of the year at Sonoma, and that only produced an 11th-place starting position on a 22-car grid. Chuck’s teammate Tony Kanaan has proven his ability to tear through the field after a bad qualifying session, and to be clear, Kimball ain’t Kanaan.

Oval qualifying was Kimball’s only strength when it came time to perform, with starts of seventh, sixth and sixth again at the last three ovals. With ovals comprising a minor portion of the schedule, it offers Kimball a limited window to exploit his talents in time trials. 

We’ve seen him mature in most areas since arriving in IndyCar, but if Kimball wants to play among the big dogs, he’ll need to find that level of aggression and determination which separates him from the men who start and finish up front. Throw red meat at the feet of a Will Power, and he’ll rip it to shreds. Toss it at Charlie, and he’ll ask for it to be sent back to the chef. If and when Kimball learns to gnash his teeth, he could become a steadier presence among the major talents in the series.

Robin Miller says…
There wasn’t an inspiring victory like the year before, but once again ol' Charlie raced a lot better than he qualified in 2014.

Nowhere all season on streets and road courses during time trials, the 29-year-old Californian had to pass a lot of cars and that’s exactly what he did.

It was tough to distinguish which charge was his best: 23rd to fifth at the Indy GP (ABOVE); 19th to fourth at Houston; 16th to fourth at Toronto or 20th to third at Detroit. He also did a nice job at Mid-Ohio (the track he conquered in 2013) by storming from 20th to seventh place.

His best qualifying efforts came on ovals (Iowa, Milwaukee, Fontana) and he ran well in those races before fading with problems.

Considering how Target teammates Scott Dixon and Tony Kanaan struggled early before surging at the end, Kimball maintained a steady pace and had as many podiums as they did after 10 races.

He’s an interesting study in that you seldom notice he’s in the lineup until halfway through the race and suddenly he’s in the frame and getting larger. If he ever starts qualifying better, CK could be a player.

David Malsher says…

Out of the cockpit, Charlie Kimball in 2014 was the same Charlie Kimball we’ve known and (although we try to be objective) liked for as long as we’ve known him. He remains a credit to his team, his sponsors and the series. He’s eloquent, approachable, polite and blessed with a quick wit that puts one in mind of his buddy, James Hinchcliffe.

Charlie’s also not overburdened with ego and can tell a joke against himself, and racing has proven that genuinely modest people tend to be self-analytical drivers, who soak up the input that surrounds them. Sure, there are probably many drivers who think Kimball is lucky to have spent the first four seasons of his IndyCar career at Chip Ganassi Racing; after all, his results in junior formula weren’t truly worthy of landing a ride in one

of the best teams in the world. But who would deny he’s used the facilities at his disposal? Year on year, Charlie stepped it up and stepped it up, learning at a voracious rate from Scott Dixon, Dario Franchitti and the data banks at Ganassi. He’s been aided in this by Brad Goldberg who, personality-wise, could be Kimball’s equivalent in the ranks of the engineers.

But finally it happened: Kimball reached a plateau this year, and as Robin notes above, it was the one-lap pace on road and street courses that was missing. No one expects CK to be in the Power/Dixon/Hunter-Reay category for laying down a hot lap. But an average grid position of 18th on right-’n’-left tracks is something he needs to fix because it leaves him with far too much work on race day. He earned IndyCar’s TAG Heuer “Don’t Crack Under Pressure” Award at season’s end for the most cumulative positions gained, but in his speech, he noted that Goldberg had told him he wouldn’t need to do that if he qualified better. Tough love, huh?

To be fair to Charlie, the Ganassi team as a whole were lost for the first half of this season, but the other three drivers sporadically shone and then moved up as the team improved. Yet Sonoma was the first time Kimball advanced from the first round of qualifying.

He races well, and a couple of drivers regard Kimball as over-aggressive which, to my mind, is a positive! If you fill a guy’s mirrors and he’s worrying that you could go for an overambitious pass, you’re mentally in the stronger position. And Kimball showed on race days he could fill the mirrors of even his teammates, all three multiple race winners. His third place in Detroit was well deserved, for he’d chased Scott Dixon throughout the race.

The big problem is that he’s a confidence driver who excels only when he can feel a lot of grip (although fourth place in Toronto in the wet (BELOW) would appear to conflict with that theory. But when both Barber and Mid-Ohio were affected by rain in qualifying, he was toast. However with the expected vast increases in downforce from the aero kits next year, I suspect we’ll see Kimball start making progress once more.

Actually, now I think about it, let's just be thankful he's around. Mikhail Aleshin's shunt at Fontana looked damn scary from Kimball's perspective.