Photo of Charlie Kimball by Joe Skibinski, Indycar
Charlie Kimball will return to A. J. Foyt Racing for two races in 2021, entering the GMR Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 15 and the 105th running of the Indianapolis 500 May 30. Kimball brings his Tresiba sponsorship to car number 11 this season.
In a full time ride with Foyt in 2020, Kimball had best finish of eighth in the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg finale. He ended 2020 18th in the final standings. The COVID-disrupted scheduled cost Kimball and the team valuable input from Sebastien Bourdais, who was cheduled to begin the year with Foyt and help get the cars set up. Bourdais is with the team full time for the new season.
Kimball will be attempting to qualify for his 11th 500 mile race. In 2020 he finished 18th after starting 29th. He finished third in 2015 and fifth in 2016 and has two other top 10 results in the 500.
Today’s announcement brings the confirmed entry list for the Indianapolis 500 to 28. Dale Coyne with Rick Ware Racing should announce their two drivers fo May, which raises the total to 30. Getting to 33 should not be an issue. I’ll discuss the field and possible entries more next week.
In a teleconference this afternoon, Larry Foyt said he was happy to get to work with Kimball again.
“Charlie was awesome to work with last year. We know Charlie and we trust Charlie.”
KImball hopes to build on how last season ended with Foyt.
“The results at St. Pete showed the progress we made as a team. We hope to be able to build on results of that last race.”
Kimball added, “I’m very comfortable heading back to Foyt. I feel I have unfinished business. We have built a solid foundation”
Kimball regrets that series races at long Beach and Toronto were cancelled last season.
Foyt said there are no plans to run a full time third car in 2021.
“We’d love to have Charlie full time, but going to 3 full time cars would have to be a really good situation. We are just focused on results this year.”
In the past few years, Foyt said the team has had ” too many changes, no consistency in drivers or engineers. I feel like its all headed in the right direction now. The Indycar field is really strong. Getting top 5s and top 10s is the goal.”
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Indycar field is really strong. getting top 5s and top 10s is the goal.
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