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During May, Ryan Hunter-Reay and his family live in a tricked-out motor home at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where his three boys can run wild at the facility that includes the Infield Lake and the Brickyard Crossing golf course.
It’s a change from their Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home, where they live most of the year, and his boys like it “honestly, more than Disney World,” he said.
The 2014 Indianapolis 500 winner always expected to buy a house in Indianapolis at some point in his career. But more than 20 years in, he never has. He said he and his wife, Beccy Gordon, recently shared regrets about that.
“We’re bummed that we never did,” he told IBJ.
The years just went by, he said, and during that time, he saw some benefit to the distance. He said the central Indiana racing scene is a bit like “a big high school,” due to the compact group of industry folks. Work-life balance in Florida is easier to manage, he said.
“When you’re representing millions and millions of dollars’ worth of investment and sponsors, it’s extremely pressure-packed, and there’s a benefit to tapping out of that for a couple of days,” he said.
Hunter-Reay, who drives part time for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, used to split the cost of a private flight to races with drivers Tony Kanaan, Helio Castroneves and Gil de Ferran. Both Kanaan and de Ferran have since retired.
And recently, Hunter-Reay has noticed a shift: More teams and young drivers are choosing to locate near IMS.
He’s part of a shrinking number of holdouts.
“More and more so, you see drivers calling Indy home, and that wasn’t necessarily the case when I got into it,” Hunter-Reay said.
Nine of the 12 IndyCar teams have a headquarters in the Indianapolis area. The exceptions are Charlotte, North Carolina-based Team Penske; Plainfield, Illinois-based Dale Coyne Racing; and Meyer Shank Racing of Pataskala, Ohio. AJ Foyt Racing is the most recent to make the move, coming from an office outside Houston.
Making the move
Columbus, Ohio-born driver Graham Rahal has lived in Zionsville, where Rahal Letterman Lanigan is headquartered, since 2010.
“In our sport, it’s really important to have a presence where the team is at,” Rahal said. “We, the drivers, are engaged a lot.”
He races for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, which his father, Bobby Rahal, co-owns. In 2022, the team opened a sprawling, 100,000-square-foot headquarters in Zionsville. The team paid $20 million for the project.
Rahal, who takes pride in being a Midwesterner, said Indianapolis has “spectacular offerings” for professional athletes, great neighborhoods and access to cottage industries within autosports that don’t exist elsewhere.
“There aren’t many other areas or places in this world—like, I’m not being funny, like, legitimately in this world—that have what Indianapolis has to offer in those regards,” he said.
Chase Selman, team manager of Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, said it is becoming the norm for younger drivers to move to Indianapolis even before they have a sponsor.
He made that journey himself as a child when he joined his father in a move from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the Indianapolis area. The elder Selman, Wayne, is a truck driver with Ed Carpenter Racing now, but he spent many years in different roles.
Both Kyffin Simpson, 20, and Louis Foster, 21, competed in the Indy NXT Series, a feeder into IndyCar proper. Although the Caymanian Simpson and Foster, a Brit, had no connections to Indianapolis outside racing, they both moved to its northern suburb Carmel once it was clear they’d be staying with the league for a while.
Simpson started as a development driver for Chip Ganassi. The young, island-born driver said he misses the ocean, but the close-knit community of IndyCar made his move easier. He runs into teammates and colleagues at the track and at the local gym.
On a visit before he moved, Simpson noticed the miles-long line of empty lawn chairs that awaited the start of Carmel’s annual Fourth of July parade.
“I just thought it was so crazy that people were so comfortable just leaving their chairs out, that they would not get stolen,” he said.
And although Carmel’s not a beachside oasis, he plans to visit the Geist Waterfront Park in Fishers this summer.
Like his younger competitor, Foster quickly noticed the safety and cleanliness of the community. He moved from Los Angeles, where life was faster and busier.
“There’s a slow pace of life, for sure. But honestly, I find that enjoyable,” Foster said. “I’ve got a busy enough work life, so having a quiet, chill home life is very nice for me.”
It also places him at the center of the series’ races, rather than in the far West. What would be a 4-1/2-hour flight to the Rahal Lanigan Letterman workshop from LA is just a 20-minute drive from Carmel.
With the team
Drivers who spoke to IBJ said they weren’t required to live near team headquarters, and team representatives concurred. Still, it has become less common for drivers to live several states away, and teams have increasingly become represented within the Indy area.
AJ Foyt Racing, which had a location in Waller, Texas, announced last year that the team’s operations would move entirely to its Speedway headquarters.
Larry Foyt, president of AJ Foyt Racing and son of the namesake four-time Indy 500 winner, said the team moved to seek talent. With just one car—that of Santino Ferrucci—the Texas-based team was adequate. But last fall, Foyt signed driver David Malukas.
“When we grew from one car to a two-car operation, we did try to do it in Texas,” Foyt said. “But we just really struggled to get the best people to relocate and come down here, probably with us really being the only IndyCar team in town.”
He added that the logistics were challenging with one car in Indianapolis and another in Texas. The team also saves on the cost of hotel rooms since most workers for AJ Foyt Racing live here.
Still, being in Indianapolis has one potential con for team owners: If drivers and staff are “not happy, they can just go down the street and find an IndyCar team,” he said.
The team in Indianapolis hasn’t quite hit a “groove” yet, Foyt said, but early tests have gone well, and the group is ready to roll into May. While about 95% of the team is in Indianapolis, Foyt still works remotely from the Houston area, along with employees in logistics and accounting.
Ferrucci, the 2019 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year, still lives in Dallas. Foyt said the young driver has offered to move to Indianapolis, but the team won’t “force him to move up there.”
Team Penske, located in North Carolina, is a notable exception to the trend because of the team’s NASCAR focus.
Regardless of whether they have a home nearby, Selman said, 90% of the drivers rent or buy motorhomes in May to stay through long nights and early mornings at the Speedway. That means that, even though Jack Harvey lives 20 minutes from the track, he stays in accommodations similar to those of his Floridian teammate Hunter-Reay.
And Hunter-Reay gets to enjoy his boat docked in Fort Lauderdale, even if it means taking Southwest nonstops to Indianapolis and the occasional Spirit Airlines flight.•
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It’s cool that so many of the racing teams have moved to Indy. Also good to see what Roger Penske Sam’s Doug Bolles (sp)have done with the Indy 500.
Good for Indycar. Interested to see where the majority of Colts & Pacers players live.
In last year’s 100 Days to Indy, Conor Daly was highlighted at his home several times. While I knew he was local and from north side suburbs, I immediately recognized his current home in Holy Cross neighborhood downtown Indy. Right next to King Dough pizza, about 2 blocks from me. Pretty cool.