The race team owner is the special guest at the Amelia.
Announced back in January, Chip Ganassi will be this year’s Honoree at The Amelia. During the 27th iteration of Northeast Florida's longest-running classic car event, renamed The Amelia, they will honor racer and winning race team owner Chip Ganassi. Read more in the official release below:
Racing legend Chip Ganassi will serve as Honoree of The Amelia, Hagerty’s recently rebranded concours weekend, scheduled for March 3–6 in northeast Florida. Tickets for the 27th annual celebration—“An event like no other”—can be purchased through the concours’ newly launched website.
Ganassi, 63, has touched every major form of North American motorsport, as well as the ultimate international road race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. He has been a fixture in the auto racing industry for over 30 years, and in addition to being an accomplished driver, he is one of the most successful and innovative owners in the sport. The Chip Ganassi Racing stable currently includes eight highly successful teams: four in the NTT IndyCar Series, two in the NASCAR Cup Series, and one each in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and Extreme E.
Overall, his teams have 20 championships and more than 225 victories, including four Indianapolis 500s, a Daytona 500, a Brickyard 400, eight Rolex 24 At Daytonas, the 12 Hours of Sebring and 24 Hours of Le Mans. Ganassi boasts state-of-the-art race shop facilities in Indianapolis, and Concord, N.C., with a corporate office in Pittsburgh.
“Honoring a hero from the racing community is an important component of The Amelia DNA,” says McKeel Hagerty, CEO of Hagerty. “From the inaugural Honoree, Sir Stirling Moss, to last year’s celebration of Lyn St. James, The Amelia has anchored the celebration of the automobile to the incredible people who have devoted their lives as ambassadors for driving.”
Ganassi made his racing debut in the 1981 Robert Bosch Super Vee Championship. In 1982, after graduating with a finance degree from Duquesne University, he started his first Indianapolis 500 in Mario Andretti’s year-old 1981 Wildcat/Cosworth. Ganassi was the fastest in a star-studded rookie class, qualifying ahead of future Indy 500 winners Bobby Rahal and Danny Sullivan. A year later, he scored two podium finishes, placed ninth in the IndyCar Championship standings, and was voted Most Improved Driver.
After a brutal high-speed accident at Michigan International Raceway in 1984, Ganassi retired as an Indy car driver. His final race in the cockpit was in the 1987 24 Hours of Le Mans. Three years later, Ganassi founded Chip Ganassi Racing, which became the only team to win the Daytona 500, Indianapolis 500, NASCAR’s Brickyard 400, and the 24 Hours of Daytona in a 12-month span.
CGR’s success includes eight victories in the 24 Hours of Daytona, two streaks of four consecutive IndyCar Championships, four Indianapolis 500 victories, including a 1-2 finish in 2012.
In Ganassi’s return to Le Mans in 2016, his team did not disappoint, scoring another historic Le Mans victory for Ford in the CGR’s first Le Mans attempt. The landmark victory came on the 50th anniversary of Ford’s historic first overall Le Mans victory in 1966.
In 2011, Ganassi received an honorary Doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University in his hometown Pittsburgh, and he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2016.
He is also well known for his charitable work on behalf St Jude Children’s Hospital.
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