Photo: Chris Owens
Top IndyCar outfit Chip Ganassi Racing looks set to expand into junior single-seater racing next year by entering cars in Indy Nxt.
It would become the third of IndyCar’s teams to also compete in its primary feeder series, after Andretti Global and Juncos Hollinger Racing, and would also mark a return to the support paddock after a 16-year absence.
Chip Ganassi’s eponymous operation was on the Indy Nxt grid in 2007 and 2008, racing with one full-time car in its first campaign and then collaborating with Integra Motorsports to compete part-time with one entry the year after.
In its debut race, 2007’s season-opening Miami 100, the team ran two cars. Chris Festa put one of those two entries on pole, and came 0.7971 seconds short of victory. Three races later he was Freedom 100 runner-up at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but through the remaining three quarters of the campaign he only got two top-10 finishes and came 10th in the standings.
Integra Motorsports with Ganassi had a trio of Kiwi talents in their car through 2008, and Jonny Reid was the most successful of those with a fourth place finish being his best result.
In May 2022, Ganassi signed Indy Lights racer Kyffin Simpson as a development driver on a multi-year deal. He made the podium twice during his two seasons in the series, then was promoted to Ganassi’s IndyCar line-up this year.
Simpson is one of five drivers racing for Ganassi, but it is anticipated that the team will not be able to maintain that capacity next year as a charter system is set to be introduced to IndyCar. That would free up resources for an expansion into Indy Nxt.
Formula Scout has been in correspondence with the team on the topic, and they pointed to this statement made by CGR team manager Taylor Kiel in an interview with RACER:
“We’ve got a lot of confidence in joining the [Indy Nxt] series. The Indy Nxt car counts are up. The quality of teams is up. There’s a lot of bonuses to being a part of that series as an IndyCar team, beyond just finding a place for our people. It’s a natural fit for us and it’s been discussed in the past here for quite a while.”
Ganassi has been in Indy car racing since 1990, and across CART and IndyCar it has run the champion driver 15 times and won 136 races.