Taylor Ferns wants to move to the top of the class in the IndyCar chase
Taylor Ferns has planned for her future and holds a master’s degree in business administration and a law degree.
Now Ferns, 28, from Shelby Township, is returning to racing. His dream is to take part in the most important North American open-wheel racing series, IndyCar, which also includes the Indianapolis 500 and the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix.
Ferns, who graduated from Wayne State University with a law degree in May, will make her Indy NXT Series debut on Saturday when she competes for Abel Motorsports at Iowa Speedway.
“I’m really excited and first of all really grateful for this opportunity to kind of take the next step in my career,” Ferns said in a 20-minute phone interview with The News. “I’ve been working towards this, not just my entire 22 years in motorsports, but especially the last couple of years and after kind of taking my college education break. I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve worked really hard for this, so we’ll see how it pans out.”
Ferns will drive for Abel Motorsports in the series, the Triple A of IndyCar.
“I’ll be racing in their third car, so I have two other teammates,” Ferns said. “My teammate Jacob Abel is fighting for the Indy NXT Series championship, and my second teammate is Yuven Sundaramoorthy. Jacob’s father, Bill, is the team owner.”
Abel is competing in the series for the third year and is second in the points standings this season with wins at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama and on the road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Ferns said she graduated from Macomb Lutheran North High School and missed 60 days a year because of her racing career. She will compete in the four oval races of the Indy NXT series and hopes to complete the series’ full schedule in the 2025 season.
Ferns has spent little time in an Indy NXT car, as she did a test drive at the Milwaukee Mile in June, but her last test drive at the same track was canceled due to weather. She’s been sitting in a simulator to get a feel for the car, although she knows she won’t really know how it runs until she practices on the 7/8-mile banked asphalt track this weekend.
“We tested in Milwaukee, so that was the only time I was on the track with the car. But other than that I did a lot of other things, like simulator training, watching a lot of videos and especially working with the engineers at Abel,” said Ferns.
“I’ve done a lot of karting and I think that will help me get the precision of the lines and late entry points that I think these cars require compared to the circuit and sprint car racing that I come from. So I’ve been trying to find other ways to compensate and make up for the lack of seat time in the NXT cars.”
When asked how the Indy NXT cars compare to the circuit sprint cars, Ferns said, “The NXT cars have about half the horsepower that I’m used to, but the wings that they have provide more downforce. I’ve raced wing sprint cars that have about 940 horsepower, about 1,500 pounds, so I’m trying to take some of the aero racing that I’ve used from that to see how that translates to the NXT racing, but obviously this is going to be a whole different caliber, so we’ll see what happens.”
Ferns has never lacked confidence, and she shouldn’t, as she is the youngest woman to win a Sprint Car race, the first woman to win USAC Midget and Sprint Car races at multiple tracks, and the second woman to win a USAC championship (2011 Regional Midget Championship).
“Obviously, I approach this as a competitor and I think highly of my abilities. So if you approach any event as a strong competitor, you want to be able to win,” Ferns said of her expectations at Iowa Speedway.
“I think there are a lot of unknowns and uncertainty because I haven’t done many laps in these cars yet, so we’ll see. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if I finished in the top three (on the podium), but you never know what could happen.
“I feel like I’m on a good team. I believe in my abilities. The Abel cars work really well on ovals. Jacob drove really well at Iowa last year (second place), so I think we’ll be in good shape.”
Ferns is looking forward to racing at Iowa Speedway and is confident that the lean angle will help her.
“Iowa is banked higher and offers higher speeds, which I think suits my driving style better,” Ferns said. “I find that Iowa is a much more precise track. Usually on a higher banked track you can afford to make a small mistake because the bank will catch you. At least that’s my experience from my sprint car racing.”
Ferns has used her education to further her racing career, securing sponsorship from law firm Sam Bernstein (2021-23) when she worked for the company as operations manager for more than four years, and also securing sponsorship for the Abel team.
Ferns grew up in a racing family whose first love was NASCAR, and that was her plan a decade ago, competing in ARCA and wing dirt sprint car events, when The News first wrote a story about her path into motorsports.
Realizing that it would be incredibly difficult to move up the NASCAR rankings due to funding, she focused on college but continued to keep her eye on motorsports.
“I come from a NASCAR family and I’m obsessed with NASCAR racing,” Ferns said. “My uncles raced newer model stock cars and I was into NASCAR for a while. In 2012 I did some newer racing and in 2013 I did ARCA racing, but I got to a certain point where I would have had to spend a lot of money if I wanted to continue and I just didn’t have the financial means to continue anymore.
“Then I started racing sprint cars at the grassroots level, and of course I took that time off to get my education, get my business and law degrees, and during that time I discovered my passion for open-wheel racing. I tried to go the stock car route before, and that didn’t work out because it was a lot more expensive than the IndyCar route, so by divine providence I got connected with a sponsor (Chicago-based real estate agency Bradford Allen), and they’re really interested in IndyCar racing. Our goals are the same, so here we are.”
Ferns grew up racing USAC sprint cars with Levi Jones. Jones is now the director of the Indy NXT series and recommended her to Bill Abel, starting a career that she hopes will one day lead her to an IndyCar race.
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