Interview: Charlie Kimball On His Improving 2016 Season

Charlie Kimball got a new paint scheme – and a new outlook – in the 2016 IndyCar season, and joined Beyond The Flag to look back on the year for the No. 83.

Charlie Kimball had an interesting IndyCar season. The No. 83 Chip Ganassi Racing driver cracked the Top 10 in the championship, tying his best career finish. He never completed a race lower than 16th. But he also found himself fighting hard with other drivers and not quite breaking through to that next level.

So how does he evaluate his 2016 campaign? Kimball sat down with Beyond The Flag just ahead of the season-ending 2016 GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma to discuss how he’s fared and what he needs to do to push his career forward next year.

“I think it’s been a good year,” he told us. “One race doesn’t make a season. It’s hard when you get to the last race because there are always things you want to accomplish more of.

“Every race we want to go out and win, but coming here with it being double points you have to be a little conscious of that as well, because there’s the opportunity for us to go all the way back to 12th or 13th and all the way up to 6th or 7th. So you have to pay attention to the championship a little bit being double points.

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“But at the same time, we’re here to win races,” he added, “and I think as a season, the crew has had the capabilities to win. We just haven’t quite broken through.”

Therein lies the rub. When one considers the Ganassi team, Kimball usually winds up being considered “the other guy.” There’s Scott Dixon, the four-time IndyCar champion, his fellow titleholder Tony Kanaan, and even Max Chilton is known for being the rookie. Kimball, by contrast, just finished his sixth year and people don’t always know what to make of him.

Has he peaked? Is he still growing? He told us what he believes needs to happen in order for him to make a statement next year.

“I think qualifying has been a huge game for us,” he explained. “We’re really disappointed if we don’t qualify in the top ten and that hasn’t been the norm over the last couple of years. So to be able to take that step this year has been really satisfying. At the same time, the racing results have been very consistent; we just need a drop of explosiveness in there.

“Maybe I use the word ‘breakthrough’ very distinctly and very directly, because I think when we break through to that next result, that next great result at least, we’ll break through and stay there,” he continued. “The consistency is there. Once we break through that glass ceiling we’ve bumped our heads on a couple times this year, we’ll keep climbing.”

He has a point. IndyCar fans may not immediately think of Charlie Kimball but maybe they should include him in their conversations a little more often. The No. 83 had four Top 10 results in its final five races, including the last three. It just needs to get back on the podium and from there, to the top step.

“I think for me you have to maximize each race and each moment,” Kimball reflected. “You have to really focus on the now and the race that’s happening at the moment because as a team, if we go out and perform at our best and get the most out of the weekend – if that’s a first, if that’s a second, a third, whatever it is – then you will do well in the championship because you get the best result you can each weekend.

“Some of [team owner] Chip [Ganassi]’s best advice to us as drivers is if the car is capable of winning, go win,” he told us. “If it’s capable of finishing second, finish second, third, fourth. Don’t take a car that’s capable of finishing second and finish eighth. And understand that if the car is capable of finishing fifth and you’re running third, you’re over-performing and bring it home.”

He’ll have a particularly intriguing opportunity to move forward in the next two years. Next season IndyCar will freeze its aero kits, as it prepares to shift to a universal kit and new chassis in 2018. How much does Kimball think handing teams the same major components will affect what goes on in IndyCar?

“I think engineering-wise it’ll be really interesting,” he theorized. “The series is already very, very competitive and any change, the faster you adapt, the better. That’s one of the great things about this team is we learn and we adapt very quickly. There’s a lot of experience in the engineering office, in the driver’s lounge, in the garages, when a change like a uniform aero kit comes in, we can make the most of that adjustment.”

“There will always be differences amongst the engine manufacturers – just how the power is what the drivability is, where it all works as far as being able to tune into a driver,” Kimball continued, “but the relationship between driver and engineer is still the most important one on the team. That ability for a driver to give the feedback and be able to back it up and say if you fix this problem with the car, I will go quicker. When they fix that, you can go out and go quicker.”

He’ll be looking to pick up some extra speed when he returns to the track in 2017 but for now he’ll get some well-deserved time off to pursue some of his many non-racing endeavors. Or possibly just keep critiquing his good friend James Hinchcliffe’s tenure on the current season of Dancing with the Stars.

“A couple buddies of mine were texting that night,” Kimball said when we asked him for his reaction to Hinchcliffe’s impressive Week 1 performance, “and said the last time they saw that look of nerves on James’s face was right before he stood up in front of your wedding and married your wife and you. I texted James and he said no, DWTS was way less nervewrecking than marrying you guys!”

“But he did really well and he’s a competitor, he’s an athlete, we all are,” he added. “He’s put a lot of time and a lot of energy and his personality is such that I think he’ll thrive in that situation. I think he was kind of a dark horse. He was kind of an unknown especially when they highlighted him coming back from an injury.”

Next: Charlie Kimball Explains The IndyCar Lifestyle

“Then you compare him to some of the other athletes and he did so well. He has this personality and atmosphere about him, and he and Sharna [Burgess] are obviously clicking, learning from each other and doing really well.”

That same idea could be applied to the future of Charlie Kimball. For him, furthering his racing career means continuing to learn. He showed in 2016 that he’s getting better even if he may not yet be one of the best – and as he keeps working at it, who knows what 2017 will have in store for him?