Pair of Chip Ganassi Racing engineers latest to join Arrow McLaren for 2027 IndyCar season

Two established IndyCar engineers under the Chip Ganassi Racing umbrella will be joining Arrow McLaren in 2027. Arrow McLaren will add Chris Simmons and Ross Bunnell to its engineering staff for the 2027 IndyCar season, a source confirmed to IndyStar on Tuesday.After Arrow McLaren signed Scott Dixon and Felix Rosenqvist to join Pato O'Ward in its full-time driver lineup next season, the team will add the veteran engineers. Team principal Tony Kanaan continues to add to Arrow McLaren as it chases its first Indianapolis 500 and IndyCar championship since McLaren Racing returned to the series full-time in 2020.Simmons has been at CGR since 2003, where he engineered for Dario Franchitti, Kanaan and Dixon in different stints before becoming the team's director of performance in 2020. Bunnell was Dixon's engineer on the No. 9 Honda before being repurposed as the engineer for Rosenqvist's No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Honda for the past two years. (CGR and MSR have a technical alliance.) Bunnell was instrumental in Rosenqvist's career resurgence, which was highlighted by his Indy 500 win this year.They are the newest additions to a grand technical overhaul at Arrow McLaren. The team signed Eric Cowdin, who has decades of experience and engineered Kanaan's 2013 Indy 500 win, as its director of engineering last fall. That came just months after it signed Kyle Moyer as a strategist and team manager after he was fired by Team Penske in May 2025 due to failed technical inspections at Indy 500 qualifying. In June, Arrow McLaren announced that 2014 Indy 500 champion Ryan Hunter-Reay would become its sporting director. Hunter-Reay will return to drive the team's extra Indy 500 entry in 2027 after crashing and finishing 32nd in this year's race.Dixon has confirmed that his CGR contract won't allow him to begin working for Arrow McLaren until January, and it is unclear when the engineers are allowed to begin their new jobs. The restriction is known as the garden leave practice, where employees are no longer working for a team but have a clause that keeps them from onboarding at a new job. The same garden leave was used for Will Power and Ron Ruzewski a year ago when they departed Team Penske for Andretti Global (Power as driver, Ruzewski as team principal and strategist).Rosenqvist's contract with MSR had no such clause, as he has begun working with Arrow McLaren. After his Borg-Warner Trophy sculpting in September, Rosenqvist told IndyStar he was set to begin simulator work in October.CGR announced in September that it has signed Christian Lundgaard – who Arrow McLaren let walk after two wins and a third-place championship finish in 2026 – to replace Dixon in the No. 9 car. The teams have traded drivers and personnel throughout the decade, and have an ongoing rivalry stemming from McLaren Racing's lawsuit against Alex Palou and CGR.Arrow McLaren has the long-term goal of being the team best prepared for IndyCar's new chassis, the Dallara IR28, when it debuts in 2028. The team is assembling a technical crew that has experience working on multiple chassis to accomplish that goal.Zion Brown is IndyStar's motorsports reporter. Follow him at @z10nbr0wn. Get IndyStar's motor sports coverage sent directly to your inbox with our Motor Sports newsletter. Subscribe to the YouTube channel IndyStar TV: IndyCar for a behind-the-scenes look at IndyCar and expert analysis..oembed-frame {width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;border:0;}This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Pair of Chip Ganassi Racing engineers latest to join Arrow McLaren for 2027 IndyCar season