Kyffin Simpson was down in Miami last weekend roaming the F1 paddock. This week, he will be in his Indy Lights machine competing in the doubleheader on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. The thing is, he’ll be walking through the Indy Lights paddock with broader shoulders after signing a deal with Chip Ganassi Racing to make this 17 year old a developmental driver with the organization.

They’ll do so with engineering and development support from TJ Speed who he races for this season in Lights competition. Simpson, also won the Formula Regional America’s championship for the team in 2021 which helped graduate him up to a Lights ride in 2022.

By signing this deal, Simpson has a direct path to a Ganassi seat in the NTT INDYCAR Series in the future as this is a multi-year endeavor.

Ganassi, has an older group in their INDYCAR rides with Scott Dixon being 41, Jimmie Johnson 46, Marcus Ericsson 31 and Alex Palou 25. There’s reason to believe in the next 2-3 years, Ganassi will have 2 seats open on the INDYCAR side so grooming Simpson now will all but assure he’ll get one of those seats.

This also gives Ganassi and in for Indy Lights but not having to start a full fledged team. Currently, only Andretti Autosport and Juncos Hollinger Racing have both Indy Lights and INDYCAR teams.