Bunnell heads to MSR as Ganassi finalizes engineers for new alliance

Today at 08:43 AM

Chip Ganassi Racing and Meyer Shank Racing have finalized the technical staffing for the Jim Meyer- and Mike Shank-owned NTT IndyCar Series team.

In a surprise, former Dale Coyne Racing engineer Ross Bunnell, who joined CGR in 2023 as race engineer for six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon on the No. 9 Honda and is rated by many as one of the brightest engineering talents in the series, has been assigned to MSR with Felix Rosenqvist on the No. 60 Honda.

Dixon and Bunnell earned three wins and placed second in the championship in their first season together, and in 2024, they produced two more wins but slid to sixth in the standings after a rough close to the season.

Bunnell's debut with MSR came last Tuesday at The Thermal Club engineering ex-Williams Formula 1 driver Logan Sargeant in the No. 06 MSR Honda. Completing the MSR race engineering group is Angela Ashmore, who worked with Marcus Armstrong at CGR last season, and who signed to drive MSR's No. 66 Honda.

"Let’s start with Marcus and Angela," Shank told RACER. "For me, this was one of those things when we knew that we were going to take Marcus on, we worked pretty hard to make sure we kept continuity there. Marcus really likes Angela. I’m just getting to know her, but it seemed to me that it made the most sense, especially if you look at Marcus’s second half of the year, he was really starting to get some momentum. And it made sense to me that we keep as much as that in places we can. Marcus has a lot of confidence in her, and that’s what I need to know."

Shank was encouraged by what he saw with Bunnell in action.

"Ross is a really good, good guy, and I could tell it by the end of the day at Thermal," he added. "I could even tell it by the end of the day with Logan with just a lot of similar mentalities to what we have here. I can easily see him working very well with Felix, just the disposition of how Felix is, how Ross is, but also just listening to Ross.

"His confidence and his knowledge of the product just oozes out of him, and that was really good for me to see. Now, ultimately, we’ll see how everyone gets along here. But man, I think it bodes pretty well so far."

MSR has also appointed Neil Fife, a veteran race engineer who joined the team from Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and worked on MSR's IMSA GTP program in 2023, as its go-between with CGR.

"That’s an important part for us as the liaison engineer with Ganassi on our side," Shank said. "He's making sure everything Ganassi-related to our cars is as it should be. So Neil working with those guys is helpful and Neil will also engineer Helio (Castroneves) when we get to the Speedway.

"We kept him on for special projects after IMSA, and now he moves into this other role, and is also our development guy. Just a humongous amount of experience. Very smart, switched on guy."

Shank is pleased with how the first outings have gone in the technical alliance with CGR.

"We’d been with Andretti for five years, and it was pretty seamless with them," he said. "We did that test at the Speedway last month which was our first with Ganassi, and it was very smooth. We had the system down before with Andretti, and it’s headed in the exact same direction with Ganassi.

"We’ve done it a couple times now with Ganassi and they're taking suggestions on what helps us and we're asking what we can help on to make things easier for them, and it’s been great. They’re just so practical and easy to deal with, and they brought the full kit of people out for Logan and I couldn’t be more encouraged. They came in with dampers and engineers, we went through lots of things, had a solid pre-run plan that we had worked out, and it’s been great."