Simpson's spare car taking shape with all hands on deck at CGR

The hardest crash during practice for the 109th Indianapolis 500 belonged to Chip Ganassi Racing’s Kyffin Simpson on Friday as the young Caymanian driver mollywhopped the Turn 4 wall with the No. 8 Honda.

With the need to prepare Simpson’s spare car to run at 8:30am Saturday morning in the brief practice session prior to the start of qualifying for the Indy 500, the entire crew from the No. 8 car dove in right after the 12:48pm crash.  

“It’s going OK,” CGR team manager Taylor Kiel told RACER just before 8pm. “We decided once we got started to just focus on making sure that everything was done right and that we’re prepared for the morning practice session tomorrow, so the engine’s been fired and car’s going back together now and it’ll be done tonight. We’re in Group 1 tomorrow, so we’ll run the practice session and try to get two runs and get the balance right and then be prepared for our first qualifying attempt.”

To get a new car ready without working throughout the night, a number of CGR staffers, including manager Blair Julian and members from the team’s Indy NXT program pitched in to get it done.

“Everybody’s worked to get this car together; crew chief Jason Beck and everybody on the No. 8 team, and we’ve had a bunch of people both from the shop and the NXT team come over to help,” Kiel added.