Simpson's 'willingness to grind' paying off for IndyCar sophomore

Chip Ganassi Racing brought Kyffin Simpson into its IndyCar Series team with significant hurdles to clear. Fresh from the 20-year-old delivering a career-best qualifying run to third for the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio, which marks his third appearance inside the Firestone Fast 12 this year, competitive strides are being made in his sophomore season.

Simpson had plenty of talent to be developed by Ganassi’s leadership team – its managers, engineers and driver coach Dario Franchitti in particular – but the one shortcoming they couldn’t overcome in a timely manner was his sheer lack of racing mileage.

The teenager from the Cayman Islands found an interest in racing many years after his contemporaries got their start, and with his late arrival in the sport serving as a limitation, the Ganassi team crafted an intensive driving program for Simpson to make up for lost time.

It wouldn’t follow the usual path of sticking to racing in a single open-wheel championship; Simpson would also embark on an IMSA endurance racing program in a GT car and head to Europe and Asia to race LMP2 machines.

He'd amass an entire weekend of junior open-wheel track time in one long GT3 or LMP2 stint, backfilling the missing mileage by spending hours and hours behind the wheel.  

“In terms of his racing career, it's super young with his experience level,” said Taylor Kiel, his CGR race strategist. “I think the biggest thing for Kiffin has always been his willingness to work and listen and learn and find seat time wherever it is. He’s been in our system for a number of years now. Even prior to his time in IndyCar, our goal for him has always been, ‘Hey, if you want to be in IndyCar, here's some of the markers you need to achieve, and you’ve got to get some more seat time.”

Along with a run up the USF Championships and Indy NXT ladders, Simpson landed in IndyCar last year at 19 years old and without much fanfare. Two podiums and a best finish of ninth in the NXT standings wasn’t much of a statement.

More IndyCar

IndyCar Officiating flags push-to-pass glitch at Long Beach

Indy 500 entry list gets to 32 with Abel

Palou credits pit crew for putting Long Beach victory within reach

Simpson’s rookie IndyCar campaign was decent – a few moments stood out – but placing 21st did little to quell the notion that he wasn’t ready for the big show. It’s here where Ganassi’s leaders took its high-mileage playbook for Simpson and modified it to address an issue that many young drivers face when they reach the top series. They were impressed by his racecraft, but there was a lot to improve in qualifying.

It can take years for drivers like Simpson to master single-lap burst of speed on Firestone’s fast but fragile alternate compound tires, and if they didn’t intervene, Kiel and the other Ganassi managers knew it might take until 2026 for Simpson to go through trial and error in IndyCar’s knockout qualifying rounds to extract ultimate speed.

The solution was to keep their young charge busy during the offseason with a range of private tests designed to increase his experience and aptitude with single-lap performances. Testing everything from Formula 2 cars to Japanese Super Formula cars to later CART/Champ Car models were rumored to be part of the testing regimen, and with IndyCar’s extreme limit on track testing with its cars, seeking educational opportunities for Simpson outside of IndyCar is where the focus was placed.

“You’ve got to have a better understanding of tires and tire management to extract the most out of one-lap pace,” Kiel said. “And we've sent him, quite literally, all over the globe to drive whatever, whenever. He's always been game to do that. He's been supported completely by us and his family, and his dream is to be a winning race car driver, and he's willing to do absolutely whatever it takes.

“I think what we're seeing now in year two in the series, he's got some circuit knowledge, he understands what's going on, what timelines look like, what his margins are. His feedback is much better than it was last year. His car control is better. His ability to execute is better. We're starting to find ourselves with more and more weekends of truly competitive pace and execution, and that really just boils down to his willingness to grind and it's working out.”