2025 IndyCar season outlook: Ed Carpenter Racing
Yesterday at 12:37 PM
With the first practice session of the new IndyCar season due to begin at St. Petersburg on Friday, Feb. 28, it's time to start ramping up for the launch with a look inside each of the 11 teams.
What's new, what's different, and what has stayed the same? We'll find out from each team, continuing after Dale Coyne Racing with Ed Carpenter Racing.
2024 ACHIEVEMENTS
To understand where the Carpenter team is starting in 2025, let's begin with a look back to where it ended in 2024.
• Drivers' championship: Christian Rasmussen, No. 20 Chevy, 22nd place. Zero wins/poles/top threes/top fives, one top 10, zero races led, running at the finish of 11 out of 14 races. Average starting position of 18.4, average finish of 18.9.
• Drivers' championship: Ed Carpenter, No. 20 Chevy, 29th place. Zero wins/poles/top threes/top fives/top 10s, one race led for three laps, running at the finish of two out of four races. Average starting position of 23.2, average finish of 19.0.
• Drivers' championship: Rinus VeeKay, No. 21 Chevy, 13th place in 2024. Zero wins/poles/top threes, one top five, seven top 10s, one race led for eight laps, running at the finish of 16 out of 17 races. Average starting position of 15.3, average finish of 13.7.
• Entrants' championship: No. 20, 21st (earned a Leaders Circle contract), No. 21, 13th (earned a Leaders Circle contract).
2025 DRIVERS
• No. 20 Chevy: Christian Rasmussen.
• No. 21 Chevy: Alexander Rossi (2024, 10th place. Zero wins/poles, one top 3, three top 5s, 10 top 10s, six races led for 109 laps, running at the finish of 13 out of 16 races. Average starting position of 10.6, average finish of 10.4).
2025 KEY POSITIONS
• Team owners: Ed Carpenter, Ted Gelov, Tony George, Stuart Reed
• Chairman: Ted Gelov
• President: Tim Broyles
• Chief Engineer: Matt Barnes
• Director of Development: Eric Cowdin
• No. 20 Race Engineer: Matt Barnes
• No. 20 Race Strategist: Tim Broyles
• No. 20 Chief Mechanic: Austin Shepherd
• No. 21 Race Engineer: Peter Craik
• No. 21 Race Strategist: Brent Harvey
• No. 21 Chief Mechanic: Jimmie Johnson
MAJOR CHANGES
• Released Rinus VeeKay, who signed for Dale Coyne Racing last week.
• After exploring his options with a number of teams, Heartland Food Products CEO Ted Gelov joined ECR as an investor and became part of its ownership group with a rumored infusion of $40,000,000 with half apportioned to the buy-in and the other half dedicated to sponsoring both cars.
• With Gelov's addition, ECR was able to hire Alexander Rossi from Arrow McLaren under a multi-year deal.
• And with the arrival of Gelov, the team parted with former sponsor Milton Todd Ault, whose BitNile company and other associated businesses owned were featured on ECR's cars through 2024.
• On the heels of many miserable oval-only seasons, Carpenter has ended his car-sharing program that split the road and street courses with a teammate or saw ECR enter a third car for Carpenter on all ovals. The revised plan has the Indy 500 as his only outing for the year in an extra entry.
• Carpenter's step back comes with a season-long promotion for Rasmussen.
• The rest of the team is largely unchanged.
• Revised its logo to feature ECR's initials inside of an overhead depiction of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
THE MISSION AHEAD IS TO…
Make use of the considerable funding and stability brought by its new partner and a renowned veteran to break free from years of being stuck in the midfield.
Having operated with a decent but limited amount of annual funding, ECR has not been able to keep pace with the biggest teams in the engineering research and development realm. While VeeKay was impressive yet again with a run to 13th in the championship — ahead of some Andretti and Ganassi drivers — there was the same old barrier that kept the team from seriously challenging for front-running results.
The closest ECR has come to reaching the top 10 since Josef Newgarden earned fourth in 2016 is 12th by VeeKay in 2021 and ’22. With Gelov involved, ECR's veteran engineers have had their first offseason in a while where coming up with big ideas to try and transform their entire season — not just concepts to win the Indy 500 — were given the green light.
Armed with a driver of Rossi's caliber who can download years of great ideas for the team to consider and implement in the shop, on pit lane, and on track, ECR has a complete team leader to launch itself into 2025.
Rossi's main task: Make ECR a regular contender across the entire calendar. It's a huge ask for the former Andretti Global and Arrow McLaren driver who placed 10th in last year's championship at a wealthier and deeper team. Rossi's tangibles and intangibles are what ECR's paying for, and with his reputation as one of the best providers of chassis feedback to his engineers and engine feedback to his motor technicians, he should have an undeniable influence on the program in positive ways.
The question for Rossi is whether that influence will be felt and seen from the outset, or if an upturn in fortunes will be displayed later in the season once he and the team have the necessary mileage to hit their interpersonal stride. The latter would make more sense.
Rossi's the perfect driver for where ECR finds itself in 2025. But he's not a miracle worker, nor is he capable of singlehandedly fixing years of unremarkable championship runs. Rossi also has a hungry young teammate who wants to absorb anything he'll share and then use that knowledge to beat him, which isn't a new dynamic (see C. Herta and P. O'Ward).
Improvements are coming and there's high optimism for all that's possible, but it's tempered with a full understanding that big turnarounds rarely happen in an instant.
Rasmussen's main task: Return to pit lane after every session with the same parts on the car that were installed before he left. “Razz” had a painfully stereotypical rookie season as he seemingly hit everything but the pace car. He also showed ample speed and promise, which is why the team kept him, but that decision comes with expectations for a cleaner and less costly season from the 2023 Indy NXT champion.
He's also been promoted to contest all races, which means he'll race on a few short ovals for the first time. Based on his output at the Indy 500 (12th) and the Milwaukee doubleheader and Nashville (11th, 16th, 14th), he's got a knack for turning left in an IndyCar, and that's always important to ECR.
At the same time, I reckon it's a make-or-break year for the Dane in IndyCar. ECR has Hunter McElrea, Linus Lundqvist, and an array of other young rockets who are hoping to get the call if Rasmussen's season goes sideways. The team can also afford to recruit a Rossi-like driver if needed.
If he shows considerable growth, avoids most of the crashes and mistakes seen last season, and turns his qualifying average from tail-end to somewhere solidly in the teens, he'll have an extended runway to enjoy in the series.
He ended 2024 on a high by hauling his car into earning a Leaders Circle contract, and with a big-name driver like Rossi to learn from and measure himself against each weekend, he has a prime opportunity to show his bosses — and the paddock — that he's a serious talent to prize or pursue.
It's hard to imagine how he'll struggle as a sophomore. Not with all of that speed and confidence. Another subplot of interest to follow is how he stacks up against Rossi outside the ovals. He was rarely close to VeeKay, but will that change with a year of experience to draw from?
GOALS
Everything should be better for ECR with the aforementioned changes in mind, but the deficit to the title contenders — the Palous and Hertas and McLaughlins — won't be erased in 2025.
It lost one heck of an Indy 500 racer in VeeKay but hired a replacement who's just as good and knows how to win the great race. Remaining relevant at Indy with Rossi, Rasmussen, and Carpenter is crucial for the team, and it would be a shock if the trio aren't major players on pole day. Of the three, Rossi is magic when it's time to race at the Brickyard, which feels like something that's safe to expect.
This is meant to be a year of leveling up. How high will ECR move in the standings?
THOUGHTS FROM TEAM PRESIDENT TIM BROYLES:
"The exciting thing about Alex is the level of experience he has, his professionalism, of being a leader and I feel like he’s taken ownership in that leadership role with himself and Christian, just their processes and working together really well," Broyles told RACER. "Integrating himself within the engineering group in the work that they’ve been doing. Obviously, we don’t have a lot of on-track running, but it’s pretty impressive tapping into a new perspective from teams that he’s been with and things that he’s been exposed to. It’s well welcomed within the group, and we’re looking forward to being challenged by him, and internally, challenging ourselves.
"That's been our off season perspective, just looking at everything we do and just being better in every aspect of what we do: Engineering, pit stops, communication, strategy, just overall preparation, of just raising the bar everywhere. And it feels like everybody’s taking ownership in that across the board.
"Christian, obviously we believe in him. That’s why he’s coming back. He has an extremely high ceiling, and he's just scratching the surface on the potential. We do have high expectations of Christian because we believe in his skills and we saw over the season, OK, there was bumps in the road, every week I felt like he got better. Every week his feedback was better. His confidence level was up, and it was how he communicated. Super excited to have him back with us the second year, and he’s going to continue to grow and we love seeing how he and Alex are working together."
