Ed Carpenter has cited competition for engineers and other team personnel as part of the reason for his team scaling back to two full time IndyCar entries in 2024.

For the 2022 season, ECR effectively expanded from a two-car team to a two-and-a-half car team. Conor Daly and Rinus VeeKay were each given full season rides, along with Carpenter himself still running the oval rounds in a third car.

That arrangement persisted for the 2023 season, but will return to one full entry for VeeKay paired with a single entry shared between Carpenter and incoming rookie Christian Rasmussen.

Part of the reason for the arrangement is likely funding limitations on Rasmussen’s part, who is using scholarship money earned from his Indy NXT championship last year to help fund his entry into IndyCar.

But Carpenter outlined that there are other reasons he will be taking over the #20 for all oval rounds bar the Indianapolis 500, and a big one is the difficulty he’s had luring talented individuals away from other teams on the grid.

“Yeah, really a lot of it was just taking an assessment of where we were and how the year went, what went well and what didn’t, how do we take a step forward,” said Carpenter about his team scaling back.

“The series is so competitive now from top to bottom. For us, it was as much as anything about making sure we’re using the resources that we have with all of our personnel and cars and preparation and putting our best foot forward.

“We staffed up more last year for the third car than we had in the past, but that’s still probably less than what other two-car teams would average.

“As much as anything, we weren’t happy with how we performed last year overall. Doing the same exact thing again wasn’t going to be the ultimate fix.

“If we could have got enough additions into the team on all sides of things from engineering down through the mechanics, maybe we could have come to a different conclusion. The competition just isn’t on track, it’s off track as well. Very hard to get new people into the building and away from other teams.

“This is a solution that allows us to be more focused and hopefully come back stronger in 2024, which is the plan.”

The team’s plan leaves Rasmussen to run only the road and street courses, plus the Indy 500, for his rookie season.

Carpenter related that he would not be willing to let the young driver join another team for the oval rounds, but there is a small chance resources can be found to get him in his team’s car for more races in 2024.

“I would say it’s early enough that there’s always potential to add to the program that we have if the situation presents itself over time and we’re able to do that.

“Certainly the long-term goal is to have [Rasmussen] running a full-time schedule, so we’ll see how that develops. Right now, this is the plan.”

Ed Carpenter Racing has announced that Christian Rasmussen will make his IndyCar debut with the team for the 2024 season.

Rasmussen will drive the road and street courses for the #20 entry including the $1 million Thermal Club Challenge, and will also drive the team’s third car for the Indianapolis 500.

The 23-year-old is the most recent winner for the Indy NXT championship, which provides him a significant sum of money to help fund his ascension to IndyCar.

Rasmussen has also previously earned championships in USF2000 and Indy Pro 2000, the two steps on the ladder leading up to Indy NXT. In addition, he has competed in the LMP2 category in IMSA with Era Motorsports.

“I am very excited to join Ed Carpenter Racing for the 2024 NTT IndyCar Series season!” said Rasmussen in the release.

“It is a dream come true and something I’ve been working towards for a long time now. I want to thank Ed Carpenter and Tim Broyles for the opportunity and I’m ready to get to work and show everyone what we can do!”

Team owner Ed Carpenter will drive the #20 for the oval rounds on the calendar, with the team reverting back to the formula it has utilized in years past.

Rasmussen has already completed a test with the team in September, running laps at the natural terrain road course of Barber Motorsports Park.

“Christian is a driver that has really stood out during his climb through the Road to Indy program and he showed his ability to be a real closer in the second half of his INDY NXT championship run,” said Carpenter

“He did an excellent job when we tested him at Barber Motorsports Park last month and showed that he is fully ready to take the next step into the NTT IndyCar Series.

“We are excited to add him to our lineup and we are anticipating a successful 2024 season!”

Rasmussen will race alongside Rinus VeeKay, who will be competing in his fifth IndyCar season with ECR.

The first race weekend of Rasmussen’s IndyCar career will come March 8-10 on the streets of St. Petersburg.

Ryan Hunter-Reay will be returning to full time IndyCar driving this weekend after being called up to replace Conor Daly at Ed Carpenter Racing.

Despite only having a couple weeks to get acquainted with the team and work out all the little details that need to be arranged before a race weekend, Hunter-Reay feels more comfortable due to familiar faces all around him.

The veteran has been in IndyCar more or less consistently since 2007, and he raced in Champ Car for three seasons before that. He has gotten to know a lot of people in the paddock in that time, which helps him for situations like the one he finds himself in now.

His recent Indianapolis 500 outing with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing was helped by his relationship with the people on that team, just as his new task will be helped by the people he already knows at ECR.

“Like I had said during the month of May at Indy and how much I enjoyed working with the people at Dreyer & Reinbold, it was about the people,” said Hunter-Reay.

“I’ve got a great relationship with Ed [Carpenter], but I also have had working relationships and really strong relationship currently with the team manager at Ed Carpenter, Matt Barnes, the engineer, my engineer, Pete Craig. I’ve worked with them before.

“My current crew chief on the #20 was my crew chief on the #28 at Andretti Autosport, so I just know a lot of the people there. They were in the position where this was something that needed to happen for the team.

“When they reached out and when Ed reached out, it was something that, ‘Hey, this is what I love to do.’

“I just came off Indy and had a great time there, really enjoyed it, and this is what I do for a living. I’m in a position where I could potentially contribute to the team as a whole. Why not? What are the why nots? What are the whys?

“Just putting all that together, and in the end it ended up coming down to the people.”

Hunter-Reay was adamant that he was not brought into the team in order to produce better results than the ones Daly was achieving, but rather to help the team find its identity.

Each team approaches a race weekend differently and has its own workflow, and ECR has fallen out of the groove this season. The team’s only top 10 results came at the Indy 500, with its drivers finding themselves in the middle or back of the pack at every other event this year.

Hunter-Reay’s task will be to use his experience to help settle the team, with race results being a secondary goal at this time.

“Right now honestly it’s race by race. We’ll see where it goes. Ed [Carpenter] is a good friend of mine. He called me. I was surprised when it happened. He called me and said, ‘I need your help. Would you be willing to do this? This is the situation that we’re in.’

“I had driven for Vision in ’09. Ed was my teammate. I had tested with the team in 2013. I tested with the team in 2021. So this is over a decade-long relationship and friendship that kind of got us to where we are at this point, and it’s a unique scenario.

“I’m not really sure where it’s going yet, and I’m not really looking that far ahead right now. I am totally focused on getting to Road America, doing the best job I can for that group of people at Ed Carpenter Racing who I have a great relationship with, and that’s really where it is. We’ll see where it goes.

“And yeah, it’s a lot of pressure on me, honestly, but at the same time, when I look at this pragmatically, I look at it from a realist point of view. There’s no silver bullet here. This is a matter of us looking at how we can approach things differently.”

Ed Carpenter Racing has announced that Ryan Hunter-Reay will drive the team’s #20 entry for the remainder of the 2023 season.

Hunter-Reay last raced full time in the 2021 IndyCar season, after having a successful 10-year stint with Andretti Autosport that saw him win a championship and an Indy 500.

The 42-year-old climbed back behind the wheel last month to compete in the Indy 500, and has now been called in to replace a departing Conor Daly at ECR.

Hunter-Reay will have the BitNile sponsorship on his car, which is a sponsor that Daly brought to the team at the start of the 2022 season.

“I was surprised when I got the call from Ed [Carpenter],” said Hunter-Reay. “He described how frustrated he was that his team has not been able to realize its potential despite their efforts, investments, as well as technical and personnel changes over the past few years and asked for my help.

“Ed and I are very close friends and have been for a long time. I’ve worked with the team in the past and they are a very talented group with high expectations and a committed partner in BitNile.com.

“This will certainly be a challenge for me as well. It’s a tough situation jumping in a car in the middle of the season without any testing in what I believe to be the most competitive series in the world.

“Certainly, part of my motivation in saying ‘yes’ to Ed is the great challenge ahead. The last time I turned right driving an NTT IndyCar Series car was in October of 2021 with this team at Barber.

“However, I remain very confident in both my driving and technical abilities and believe by working with the talented people at ECR and Team Chevy, while representing BitNile.com, we will make progress. I am going to do everything I can do to help the team achieve its long-term objectives.”

Hunter-Reay will race alongside Rinus VeeKay in the #21, and team owner Ed Carpenter in the #33 at the remaining oval races on the calendar.

Collectively, ECR’s best results this season have been at the Indy 500 when the team’s drivers finished eighth, 10th, and 20th. Aside from that race, there have been many disappointing results, with no other top 10s being scored.

Hunter-Reay’s first race with the team will be in just over one weeks’ time at the newly repaved Road America.

Ed Carpenter racing is in a bit of a stable period, at least as far as its driver lineup is concerned. The team is still working hard to improve in other areas, including bringing in athletes from other sports to help improve their results.

Fueling Rinus VeeKay’s #21 entry this season will be a former lineman from the NFL, who has no trouble wrangling the heavy fuel hose with consistency when it’s needed most.

The new member of the team also has no trouble keeping up with the team’s renewed focus on fitness and efficiency, which will hopefully translate to performance at the track.

“There’s some new guys that came in,” revealed VeeKay to MotorsportWeek.com. “Actually an ex NFL offensive lineman, from the [Denver] Broncos. He’s refueling.

“He’s 360 pounds of pure muscle, it’s crazy. We call him Big Ben. So there’s some more athleticism in the team. We also have a D1 [college football] quarterback as a system engineer, so there’s some more young blood coming into the team, which I think is really good. It brings more a bit more energy to the team.

“I feel like it’s been better than it’s been for the time I’ve been at ECR.”

Only partially due to the boost from his newest team member, VeeKay has a good feeling for the upcoming season, which is his fourth with ECR.

That familiarity has given him and his crew plenty of time to learn to communicate well, to the point that each side of the equation can almost predict each other.  

“I know what the team needs, and the team knows what I need,” continued the Dutchman. “We speak the same language. Especially as a foreigner, you give feedback and it can be understood differently.

“I remember in my rookie season there was some confusion sometimes, but right now my engineer knows which questions to ask to extract the most info. There’s a good atmosphere in the team.

“Good morale, yeah. Everyone’s excited. Everyone knows we did well last year. There’s always parts we can improve on, but I think it’s going to be good.”

Ed Carpenter Racing has launched a new driver development program to help bring young talent into its IndyCar stable, and it has already hired its first young driver.

Josh Pierson, 16, is the first driver to be part of the new program, and will be mentored by team owner Ed Carpenter as he races in the final rung of the feeder series ladder Indy NXT for the next two seasons.

The stated goal of the program is to have Pierson ready to race for ECR in IndyCar for the 2025 season, giving the team solid driver options well into the future.

As part of his development, the team will give the Oregon-native test runs in an Indy car starting as soon as next season.

“I have truly enjoyed getting to know Josh Pierson and his family,” said team owner Ed Carpenter.  “For such a young man, he has already accomplished so much in his racing career.  Along with that, he is such a well-spoken and professional person.

“I am confident with the plan that we have in place that he will develop into a complete racing driver.  We very much look forward to working with him as we finalize his path to the NTT IndyCar Series starting in 2025.”

Pierson raced in USF2000, the lowest rung of IndyCar’s feeder series, in 2020 and 2021.  He ended his time in the series by finishing fourth in the championship while competing with Pabst Racing.

He then spent last season racing LMP2 cars in IMSA and WEC, becoming the youngest-ever winner by logging a class victory at the 1000 miles of Sebring.

For next season, Pierson has used his talents to secure a ride with the formidably-large HMD Motorsports team in Indy NXT, and got his first taste of the cars in the series’ open test last month.

He will have the advantage of being coached by HMD and ECR as he contests a partial season next year, followed by a full Indy NXT championship run in 2024.

“I’m honored by the confidence Ed Carpenter has placed in me and so incredibly grateful to have a path to IndyCar with Ed Carpenter Racing,” said Pierson in the announcement. “I’ve been dreaming about racing in the NTT IndyCar Series for as long as I can remember!”

ECR will continue with its driver lineup from last season for 2023, with Rinus VeeKay and Conor Daly filling the team’s two full-time seats. Carpenter will continue to run the season’s oval events, as he has done for the past nine seasons.

Ed Carpenter Racing has announced this its young Dutch driver Rinus VeeKay will stay with the team as the driver of the #21 entry next season.

VeeKay has raced his entire IndyCar career with ECR, and will now stay with the team for a fourth consecutive season in 2023.

The 21-year-old has one win since graduating to the top level series, but suffered a downturn in performance following an off-track bicycle crash in the middle of last season.

He has rebounded this season, however, and has six top 10 finishes so far this year.

“I am very excited to continue with Ed Carpenter Racing for what will be my fourth year in the NTT IndyCar Series,” VeeKay said in the release. “Ed Carpenter gave me the opportunity to drive for the team when I came out of Indy Lights and has let me showcase my talents in an Indy car ever since.

“The continuity at ECR is great, there have barely been any changes in my time here and it’s very nice to have the same group of people around me all the time.  We have been stepping up our game every season and with the support of Todd Ault and BitNile, we can really move forward as we head into 2023.”

With the extension, VeeKay becomes the longest-tenured driver that ECR has ever had, Ed Carpenter himself notwithstanding, in its 11 year existence.

He will remain paired alongside Conor Daly, who is currently finishing up the first year of his two-year deal with the team.

“I am so happy to be able to extend our relationship with Rinus, he is an extremely versatile and talented driver,” said Carpenter. “It has been and remains our hope to build our team to new heights with Rinus helping lead the charge.

“Our goals and expectations are to win races and to compete for championships. With Rinus’s growth and the support from BitNile and Todd Ault, we are primed for success.”

VeeKay’s announcement takes him off the market for next season, and leaves one less driver available to fill in for Alex Palou at Chip Ganassi Racing should the ongoing contract dispute result in a vacancy at that team.

Drivers from Andretti Autosport and Ed Carpenter Racing spent Thursday at a private test session familiarizing themselves with the short oval in Newton, Iowa.

The two teams present were the only ones that did not take part in the test at the same location last month, which hosted a large portion of the field.

Seven drivers in total drove on the 12 degree banking, and put in over 1,400 laps before heading home and preparing for next weekend’s race in Toronto.

Conor Daly set the outright fastest lap of the day, completing a circuit of the shortest track on the calendar in a scant 18.2497 seconds.

The 30-year-old driver traditionally does well at Iowa Speedway, and finished in eighth place while driving for Carlin the last time the series visited in 2020.

Alexander Rossi was the next fastest on the timesheets, followed by the other two members of ECR, Ed Carpenter and Rinus VeeKay.

VeeKay was the driver that completed the most laps over the course of the day, running a full race distance of 281 laps.

All four members of the Andretti team were at the track testing, meaning that the drivers had to work together following a contentious race weekend at Mid-Ohio that saw each have at least one incident with a team-mate.

Iowa is the next oval on the schedule and is one of two short ovals coming up in the next few weeks for IndyCar, with Gateway scheduled to be run in mid August.

But first, the series will head to the streets of Toronto before taking on the 7/8-mile track in anger on July 23 and 24 for two races in as many days.

Conor Daly is nearly halfway through his first full season with Ed Carpenter Racing, and is more confident than ever for the rest of the season.

That confidence springs from his recent strong results, which have seen him finish in the top 12 for each of the past three races, a streak he has only had one time previously in his career.

It also comes from his ability to consistently work with his ECR crew, which he has only joined on a part time basis before this season.

Speaking to Motorsport Week, Daly described how he feels that he is on course for his best IndyCar season to date.

“We have been getting better at every weekend, which is nice,” said the 30-year-old driver.  “We’ve qualified well at the last three races, which are entirely different races, and we’ve raced well at all three of them.  That gives me a lot of confidence.

“This is definitely the highest I’ve been in the championship this deep in the season.  Everything is going the right direction.

“It’s weird to think that if Texas had gone the way we thought, if Alabama where we just missed on strategy had gone the way we thought it was going to go, we’d be in the top 10 in points, easily.”

Daly currently sits 12th in the points standings, and is less than 20 outside the top 10.  The highest he as ever finished a season has been 17th, meaning he is on track to have his best season in his nine-year career.

His BitNile sponsorship also provided him with a two-year deal with ECR beginning this year, which will give him plenty of time to build on his momentum even further.

Conor Daly is racing a full IndyCar season with the same team for the first time since 2017, and it is already providing him with a much-needed confidence boost.

Returning to Ed Carpenter Racing for the third consecutive season already did a lot to ease the mind of the 30-year-old that has bounced around teams his entire career, but having the full season secured was equally valuable.

Instead of switching to another team when the series visited an oval, Daly is now able to remain with the same crew and car he has for the road courses.

That consistency has immediately translated into confidence for both him and the team after three races of the season, even if the results aren’t quite there yet.

“We’re much more confident than people probably expect us to be,” said Daly in an interview with Motorsport Week.  “It’s nice to be with one group and be able to plan ahead.

“Especially with spotters for the Indy 500 and rest of the ovals, we have some spotter continuity there as well which is nice.

“We obviously haven’t gotten the results we want yet, but neither have a lot of people.  There’s a lot of really good drivers who have had tough starts.  But we set the fast lap of the race in St. Pete and we knew we were fast in Texas.  We just had some technical glitches happen there.

“I’m totally fine with where we’re at.  At some point you keep having to think that we will execute everything, but we haven’t had that opportunity yet.”

Daly was able to secure sponsorship from BitNile for this season, which is the reason he was able to sign a full time contract in the first place.

His results have steadily improved so far this season, and hopes to keep moving forward as the consistency begins to pay off.