IndyCar racer Charlie Kimball finds ‘true love’ in driving, and that’s no ‘malarkey’

Charlie Kimball’s parents should have known better.

Even though his father was a Stanford alum, his grandparents had attended the school and his aunt was the university archivist, Charlie’s promise to defer entry into the Stanford School of Engineering for just two years while he pursued a racing career should have been taken with a major grain of salt.

“My mom said she just wanted to make sure I got a good education so I could have a real job one day,” Kimball recalled. “She told me, ‘This racing malarkey will never turn into a career.’

“I try to remind of her that every Indy 500.”

Indeed, Kimball, now 30, never made it to Stanford or any other college for that matter.

He’s entering his fifth Verizon IndyCar Series season driving the No. 83 Chip Ganassi Racing Team entry.

The No. 83 has significance. That was the year of Ganassi’s best Indy 500 finish, eighth, in a car designed by Gordon Kimball, Charlie’s father, Gordon Kimball, who also designed the 1980 and 1982 500 winners driven by Johnny Rutherford and Gordon Johncock.

Gordon Kimball now manages his son’s career while also raising avocados in Camarillo, California.

It was Gordon Kimball who gave Charlie a go-kart when he was 9 and later on, at age 16, let him test a Formula 4 car he was working on.

“My mom and some others in my family may have had different perspectives, but in my mind, I didn’t really have a choice,” Kimball said last week after he and other team members completed testing at NOLA Motorsports Park, site of April’s Indy Grand Prix of Louisiana. “Driving was my true love. There’s no place I’d rather be than in the car. Pursuing my dream was what was really important to me.”

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