Yahoo Autos Why Palou’s Indy 500 pole is so significant for the American Legion
To take pole position for the Indianapolis 500 is always more special than for any other race on the IndyCar schedule. Whoever prevails in this 230mph-plus battle for honors gets to be top dog for a week rather than just a day, becomes part of the fabric of Indianapolis Motor Speedway with those legendary iconic pole-winner and front-row photoshoots. And those images of the driver and team celebrating are sent around the world, many times over the next seven days.
But when Alex Palou captured P1 for the 107th running of the 500 with the fastest ever four-lap pole-winning average of 234.217mph, it held significance far beyond mere speed records or accolades for Palou, his race engineer Julian Robertson, team owner Chip Ganassi, the No.10 CGR crew and Honda. It means that a car backed by the American Legion will lead the field to the green flag today, on Memorial Day Weekend.
The American Legion, now in its third year as partner with Chip Ganassi’s squad, supports military members who put their lives on the line for this country. For over a year, it has been pushing its message “Be The One” to help when a veteran is at risk of suicide. The campaign encourages everyone to ask veterans how they are doing, to listen when a veteran needs to talk and to reach out when a veteran is struggling.
If you are one of the many whose throat tightens pre-race as the 300,000-strong Speedway crowd quietens and the lone bugle plays the beautiful, mournful “Taps”, seeing Palou’s American Legion car head the 33 cars is a moment that won’t be lost on you.
For Ganassi’s performance director Chris Simmons, those parade laps will have special resonance. Before he turned ace engineer, he was a racecar driver – a highly promising one, in fact – who fell in love with racing at an American Legion-backed venue, and made his debut there. And despite being the son of a military veteran, it wasn’t until his teens that he appreciated what the Legion does for ex-service men and women.
“My father was sponsoring cars at Stafford Springs,” says Simmons, “and we went to see quarter-midgets at an auto show. He said, ‘Do you want to try that?’ and I said ‘Yes!’ I was six years old at the time and I made my first start at Silver City, Meriden, CT., on grounds owned by the American Legion. That’s how I got started in racing.
“I was just a kid, and it was only as I got older that I realized how the American Legion was supporting the club, and not just the racing; there was baseball and other kind of outreach things.
“Dad had served in Vietnam and didn’t really talk about it much. He was in the Air Force, at radio read-out posts up on a hill. He didn’t see a lot of the action that many of the Vietnam veterans saw, but he certainly heard a lot of it on the radio and he knew closely some of those involved.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s association with Rhe American Legion’s ‘Be the one’ campaign is a point of pride for everyone at the team, but for engineer Chris Simmons, it hits especially close to home. Image via Chip Ganassi Racing
“And a lot of them go through PTSD from the heavy things they have had to deal with. I think a lot of them get used to that high-adrenaline surge, like in racing, and when you don’t have that, it can play with your mind and your body. So I think the American Legion has done a lot of great work through the years, and especially now with their “Be The One” campaign. So I couldn’t be prouder to be part of this team. We have so many great sponsors, but to carry the Legion’s colors on Memorial Day weekend is extra special.”
Quickly, the racing bug bit, and Simmons started traveling all over the country, and racing four cars in different classes.
“We hosted the Nationals at Silver City in the late 1980s,” he recalls, “and by then my Dad was the race director. The American Legion was gracious enough to give us even more grounds to deal with the 150-200 competitors who came in for nine days of what was called the Grand Nationals back then. Then someone thought that name had been copyrighted so now it’s just called the Grands.
“The American Legion were super-supportive and allowed us to have a big shipping container there, and that’s what we worked out of for those nine days.”
Simmons eventually went to the Spenard-David racing school in Canada, which had drivers of the caliber of David Empringham and Pat Caprentier as instructors. On returning to the U.S., a “slightly less than 18” Simmons made his SCCA North East Division debut in Sports 2000, and then in USAC Pro Series – a forerunner of USF2000 – he won five out seven races and the title, also grabbing SCCA Runoff honors at Road Atlanta.
“That was the same year, 1991, that I graduated from high school,” says Simmons. “I went off to college, but I couldn’t decide whether to study mechanical engineering or business, whichever one would help my racing career more! So I ended up doing engineering and combined it with a racing program in summers.”
And with some success. He conquered Formula Ford 2000 in 1992 and ’93, and graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in ’95. He also made his first step into Indy Lights, before running out of money, but not before attracting the attention of Team Green, who hired him for ’96. He finished 10th in the championship, and applying what he’d learned in his rookie season, Simmons took two poles, three podiums and finished fifth in the championship in ’97.
“I got to race against a few guys who were semi-talented,” he says with a straight face. “Helio Castroneves, Cristiano da Matta, Tony Kanaan…”
So is he an engineer or a frustrated racing driver? Now he does smirk: “Oh, you know, I’m just between rides! It’s been a while, but…
“I still joke with Dario [Franchitti] that he stole my ride, getting that IndyCar seat at Team Green in ’98.”
Simmons jokes that Dario Franchitti helped fast-track the end of his driving career by stealing his Team Green ride, but as an engineer, he and the Scot proved to be a hugely effective combination in IndyCar. Paul Webb/Motorsport Images
Switching to the Mattco Raceworks team for a third season in Lights, Simmons suffered a violent crash at Nazareth not long into the season. That tore ligaments in his leg and compelled him to miss four races, and while he came back and scored a podium at Toronto, at the end of ’98 he was done.
“It wasn’t the crash,” he explains, “I just couldn’t find the money for ’99. I had good chances and it just didn’t work out, but fortunately I had my education to fall back on. I got lucky because I was able to driver coach and engineer my brother Jeff in the Barber Dodge Series for ’99 [which Jeff won for the second straight year] and he got the Team Green ride in Indy Lights – driving my old chassis – and again I was his race engineer. Then I graduated to Team Green’s IndyCar squad.”
Finally he had made it to the top rung of U.S. motorsport, but as an engineer. Simmons served as assistant engineer for Paul Tracy, then Kanaan, as Team Green evolved into Andretti Green Racing (nowadays known as Andretti Autosport). He was then lured to Ganassi for 2003, where he has been ever since. He was race engineer for Franchitti during the Scot’s three consecutive title-winning campaigns 2009-’11, and had the same role for Dixon when he scored his 2015 and ’18 titles. Now as director of performance, he engineers Dixon but oversees all the Ganassi squad’s development, both in IndyCar and IMSA.
And even now he uses what he learned in a racecar cockpit to fully comprehend what Dixon and the other CGR drivers are providing as feedback.
“Absolutely it helps,” says Simmons. “It makes speaking ‘driver’ a first language for me. When a driver tells me what a car is doing, it’s second nature to me; I know what he’s saying, I’ve actually felt most of what he’s saying. That clarifies for me which of the literally hundreds of changes I could make would most benefit the driver.”
So while racing needed Simmons, fate set him on a different path than the one he originally chose. But thanks to his own talents, and those of the extraordinary men and women that Chip Ganassi has assembled, he has achieved a huge amount of success.
“And it all goes back to lessons learned in quarter-midgets at the American Legion track at Meridan,” he concludes. “And as a by-product, I’ve learned what the Legion is all about. You know, my Dad never really talked about his days in the Vietnam War, and I think a lot of veterans go through that, where it’s in their heads and their minds, but they feel they can’t talk about it. Then when they do want to talk about it, the American Legion is such a good resource.
“For some veterans, I’m not sure they ever again feel the camaraderie they felt in the barracks, the significance of shared experiences, the bond that comes from knowing that everyone they’re with would put their lives on the line for each other. Losing those associations after leaving the military can be really heavy stuff, so knowing a support network like the American Legion is out there for them is super-important.
“So yeah, couldn’t be more proud to be associated with the Legion and getting the “Be The One” message out there. Having Alex putting those colors up front on Sunday, on the day we remember what we owe to our service men and women, is very, very special.”
