Oilpressure

It should not have come as a surprise to anyone that Kyffin Simpson was named to the third and final entry for Chip Ganassi Racing for the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series season. It has been a few weeks now since Ganassi announced they were scaling back from five cars this past season, to three for next year – mostly due to the new charter system that will be in place next season that limits teams to only three charters.

Scott Dixon and Alex Palou will retain their seats at Ganassi, with Dixon remaining in the No. 9 and Palou in the No. 10. They have nine IndyCar titles between them, with Palou winning three of the past four. Marcus Armstrong saw the writing on the wall and was able to slide into the No. 66 car at Meyer Shank Racing – the same car that David Malukas drove for the second half of the 20204 season.

Linus Lundqvist hasn’t been so fortunate. After a full season at Ganassi that saw mixed results, Lundqvist has yet to land anywhere – while his No. 8 car sat vacant. I don’t know if there was any official announcement that Lundqvist would not be returning to Ganassi in 2025, but it was generally accepted among the IndyCar paddock and most fans that he would not be back.

While the No. 8 car sat with an unnamed driver, most suspected that Kyffin Simpson would return to the team despite finishing twenty-first in points in 2024. For the record, Marcus Armstrong finished fourteenth and Linus Lundqvist finished sixteenth – yet neither of them were invited back.

There’s a reason for that – cash. There’s a reason that I’ve sometimes seen Simpson’s last name spelled “$impson”.

Now we know that Simpson will drive the No. 8 entry for Chip Ganassi Racing (a change from his No. 4 this season) in 2025.

Some will view this news as an atrocity – another example of an untalented driver with cash, taking a spot on the grid that a much more talented driver should be occupying. Others will say this is the economic racing environment we live in today – a driver with tons of cash is brought on, in order to finance the proven drivers on the team.

I fall somewhere in the middle on this, while I recognize that this is the reality that most teams are facing – it doesn’t mean I have to like it. But I want to know how much talent does Kyffin Simpson have? Obviously coming off of a rookie season that was not good (his best finish was thirteenth at Milwaukee), is not a fair way to judge. His record in the various development series was hit or miss. He seems to be well-suited for sports cars, but his open-wheel resume is still a work in progress.

I remember when Devlin DeFrancesco was a rookie, some were saying that despite the money he brought to the team, he really had talent. I never saw it in two seasons at Andretti, but what do I know? Sting Ray Robb reportedly has a massive amount of cash behind him. His rookie season was terrible, but he seemed to improve in Year Two, even though he was with a different team. Robb remains unsigned for next season, but I haven’t written him off. I don’t think he will suddenly be the next Alex Palou, but I think Robb can have a respectable IndyCar career given the right circumstances.

Ride buyers have been given a bad rap over the years. They are nothing new. There have been ride-buyers since the 30s or 40s. They are nothing new. In fact I see them as almost necessary.

While some see ride-buyers as parasites that are taking a spot on the grid, while deserving talented drivers sit on the sidelines; they might be viewed as simply making more cars possible. I think most people prefer today’s IndyCar fields with at least twenty-seven cars on the grid for each race. It wasn’t that long ago that it was sometimes a struggle to get eighteen cars on the grid for each race. Do we really want to go back to those days?

Kyffin Simpson not only pays the bills for his car, but he also helps fund the budgets for Palou and Dixon, and their respective teams. Sting Ray Robb not only paid for the entire budget for the No. 41 team , but it was his signing last year that allowed the team to sign Santino Ferrucci. Without Sting Ray, chances are good that Foyt would not have been able to sign Ferrucci.

I’m not saying I like this system. I would much prefer a system where all twenty-seven cars on the grid were filled with paid drivers, who brought nothing to the table except for their helmet and their talent. But in today’s IndyCar world, that scenario would put about eleven or twelve cars on the grid. Is that what we want?

So give the so-called ride buyers a little love. Many of them are actually excellent drivers (Marcus Ericsson, for example). They actually provide a vital service to the series – they keep some teams afloat.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on November 1, 2024 at 4:03 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.