Yahoo Autos IndyCar and sports car engineer Fry back on the market
Veteran open-wheel and sports car engineer Brandon Fry has hit the open market. The American has departed Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing after spending six seasons in a leadership role. His most recent post was as technical director of the BMW M Team RLL IMSA GTP program, which vied for the championship through the final round.
Prior to RLL, Fry worked as an IndyCar race engineer at Chip Ganassi Racing and with Nissan’s factory LMP1 effort, ran Muscle Milk’s championship-winning ALMS LMP1 campaign, and spent many years engineering in Champ Car.
“I enjoyed six years with the BMW program where we introduced the M8 GTE and had a few wins with back-to-back Daytona 24-hour races,” Fry told RACER. “And then it was really rewarding with the development in the lead-up to what was the first year of GTP racing and the first win for the brand in that class.
“I had great ownership support with Bob Rahal and Mike Lanigan, and all the people I worked with in the roles that I had there. Great organization and great workforce. We got to the end of the season and as much as I’ve enjoyed the technical director position, I’ve also missed race engineering, which is still a passion of mine.”
While at RLL, Fry got a chance to moonlight between IMSA events as the race engineer for its part-time third IndyCar entry which made quite an impact.
“The 2021 season was a light season on the schedule from BMW perspective because we only did four races,” he said. “So I got the opportunity to run Santino Ferrucci at the Indy 500 where we were sixth, and then that expanded into a few more races with Santino where he did quite well.
“And then I engineered Christian Lundgaard in his first race in IndyCar where he started fourth and did the last three races with Oliver Askew, so it ended up being eight IndyCar races on top of the four BMW races, which for me was the best of both worlds.”
Fry is going to enjoy the Thanksgiving break and then turn his attention to which paddock(s) and roles are of interest to pursue. The idea of getting back on the timing stand, however, and working one-on-one with drivers, might be the direction he follows.
“Reflecting upon it, I’m not against continuing as a technical director on the operations side in the right situation, but I also know that I really like making speed,” he said.
“I like the competitive aspect of working solely on that with the car, with the mechanics, with drivers. There’s a draw there. Race engineering is what got me excited about motorsports years ago.”