The IndyCar silly season is raging…for engineers

Drivers are the normal focus for our silly season updates, but it’s time to turn our attention to the most aggressive recruitment efforts going on behind the scenes, and that’s with some of the biggest names in race engineering and technical directing.

Behind the scenes, one person has been the subject of more inquiries than any other this year – including most drivers on the free agent market – and that’s Chip Ganassi Racing performance director Chris Simmons. Among engineering leaders and technical types, Simmons (pictured above with Ganassi driver Kyffin Simpson) is regarded among his peers as an Alex Palou-level talent, which is why he’s drawn so much interest. In a call with Chip Ganassi this week, he confirmed Simmons’ status as being in a contract year, but did not speak to anything beyond Simmons’ ability to stay or go.

If Simmons elects to leave, I’ve only heard Arrow McLaren mentioned as his expected destination, and if that’s the case, Zak Brown and Tony Kanaan will have pulled off the coup of the silly season.

As a race engineer, Simmons won multiple championships at Ganassi with Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon, and engineered Kanaan during his years alongside Dixon. During the offseason of 2019, Ganassi created the new role of performance director and shifted Simmons – a former high-level junior open-wheel driver who reached Indy Lights before turning to race engineering – away from being attached to any single driver. The scope was immense as Simmons was tasked with assessing all aspects of how Ganassi went IndyCar racing, finding the shortcomings, providing solutions and searching for new areas to explore that would make the team faster on pit lane, faster on track, faster in the engineering room, and faster for the future.

As the new all-encompassing instrument helping to tune Ganassi’s competitive effort, the team won the 2020 championship in dominating fashion with Dixon and has won six titles in total with Palou’s five added to the tally since Simmons was elevated to performance director.

RACER has confirmed Ganassi race engineer Ross Bunnell – who joined the team from Dale Coyne Racing to engineer Dixon and was later reassigned to Meyer Shank Racing with Felix Rosenqvist – has left the team. Bunnell won the Indianapolis 500 in May with Rosenqvist, and while unconfirmed, I’ve heard he’s headed to Arrow McLaren where Rosenqvist has signed to drive the No. 7 Chevy.

Speaking with MSR co-owner Michael Shank this week, he did not go into detail on changes, but did confirm he and the Ganassi team were working on next year’s engineering solution for the car Mick Schumacher will drive.

The staffing silly season is raging and before it’s over, more engineers and one or more managers are likely to settle in at new IndyCar homes. And with the driver silly season almost done – AJ Foyt Racing’s second car, both of Dale Coyne Racing’s entries and Juncos Hollinger Racing’s second car are all that’s left – the 2027 grid is nearing completion.