A pair of Honda racers from the Chip Ganassi Racing team sat down with around 150 Cayman students from eight schools on Friday, 2 Dec., for a meet-and-greet, Q&A session.
Held in the Camana Bay Cinema, the event featured 2022 Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson, his engineer Angela Ashmore and Cayman’s own Indy racer Kyffin Simpson.
The three speed enthusiasts answered many questions from the youngsters covering several topics, including Ashmore being the first woman engineer to share an Indy 500 championship.
Simpson, 18, who was born in Barbados but raised in Grand Cayman, previously attended the Cayman International School before getting into racing full time.
After the event, he told the Compass that he was happy to be back home inspiring some of his peers.
“It’s great to be speaking to all these kids from all the schools,” Simpson said. “Seeing all these kids that I went to school with actually, and a lot of them are my sister’s age, and classmates.”
Simpson continues to pursue his dream while trying to complete his high school General Equivalency Diploma. During this journey, he has captured several wins, including the 2021 Formula Regional Americas Championship.
Outside of Simpson, junior formula racer Josh Mason is the only other known driver representing the Cayman Islands. Simpson encouraged young Caymanians to try out the single-seat open-wheel sport.
“When I was living in Barbados, one of my good friends started karting when he was really young and I got into it through him,” he said. “Karting is a great place to start; Marcus started karting and many other kids because it’s a great learning ground for all the skills you need.”
He noted that Cayman doesn’t currently have a kart track but said there are many tracks throughout the Caribbean and Florida.
Simpson, who signed a multi-year development deal with Chip Ganassi Racing earlier this year, is excited about his future, with partners like Ericsson and Ashmore by his side.
“It’s great sitting down with Angela, who is a great engineer,” he said. “We are all teammates; we all work together. It helps me a ton. Marcus has raced in Formula One. He has experience in IndyCar for the last four years.
“We have other great teammates like Scott Dixon, who is a six-time IndyCar champ, and he is one of the best-ever drivers and it’s great to learn from all these great drivers and how I can get better by taking advice from them.”
When asked if he would like to see a racetrack in Cayman, Simpson said; “I thought about that before, but it would be really tough here.”
“Not only would you have to facilitate around 100,000 people, but you would also have to find a place to put it that wouldn’t disrupt everything. My best option would be a straight course race. So just turn some of the roads temporally into a track, but you will have to find good roads that won’t stop all the traffic. It might be possible, but it would be difficult.”
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