Written by Archie O’Reilly, Edited by Morgan Holiday
Alexander Rossi has hailed the collective effort from Ed Carpenter Racing (ECR) amid what has been regarded as the team’s biggest reset since its inception in 2012.
“There’s incredibly talented individuals at this organisation,” said Rossi, who signed a multi-year deal to join ECR for 2025 and beyond. “There’s a reason that they’ve had success in the past. There’s a reason why they’re as competitive as they are at some tracks throughout the year.
“It’s just more of how do we get that sort of result throughout the rest of the season? I think my experience can be beneficial but, at the same time, I’m learning from them as well. It’s really a group effort.”
The 2025 season marks Rossi’s 10th in IndyCar. He spent seven seasons with Andretti Autosport, during which he became an eight-time race winner, before joining Arrow McLaren in 2023. He finished ninth and 10th in the championship standings with the papaya team, finishing on the podium once in each of his two seasons.
Searching to re-find the form that saw him finish second and third in the standings with Andretti in 2018 and 2019, Rossi joins an ECR team that has only won one race since 2016. The team’s best championship finish since Josef Newgarden finished fourth in 2016 is 12th.
As the veteran of the team’s driver lineup alongside sophomore Christian Rasmussen, this project is a different type than Rossi is used to, as he has been accustomed to driving for readymade front-running teams - for the majority of his IndyCar career, at least.
“In 2023 the team that I was with - I think we made a big step from ’23 to ’24… 2023, it wasn’t a front-running organisation unfortunately,” Rossi said of his time at Arrow McLaren.
As much as he has been a part of teams capable of winning races from the outset and ECR offers a slight buck to that trend, Rossi does not feel as though his job has changed.
“You go in and provide the most amount of information you can to the people around you,” he said. “You try and leverage the skills of those around you. It doesn’t matter if it’s an F1 team, if it’s a sports car team, it’s all the same dynamic. It’s just varying scales.
“Whether you’re going from Andretti, Penske, McLaren, to an ECR, it’s all pretty much the same. It’s just the number of people, really, the biggest difference. For me, all that means is trying to provide them with as much past knowledge as possible to try and make our list of questions smaller.
“It’s really no different. It’s just the amount of people you’re working with is smaller, which in some ways makes it quite a bit easier.”
ECR is the ‘smallest’ team Rossi has been a part of in terms of resources and personnel. But he does not see this as a bad thing.
“The men and women on the team have a much harder job than we as race car drivers do,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who you are as a race car driver, as a person, you’re not going to have any sort of success without the individuals around you.
“What’s really cool about being such a small team is we can make adjustments and we can change development paths, trajectories where we think we need to be different very, very quickly. That’s something certainly new from previous experiences.”
Rossi has also been impressed with how present the new ECR co-owner Ted Gelov, owner of Heartland Food Products Group, has been since coming onboard in the off-season.
“I think what’s amazing about this group is it’s not a sponsorship,” Rossi said. “They are invested in the ownership of the team. They very much care about the progress and giving us the tools that we need in order to be successful.”
Gelov and Heartland’s consumer brands Splenda and Java House are the primary sponsors of ECR’s two cars. The investment also aided the signing of Rossi and renewal of Rasmussen for the long term.
“I don’t view them as a sponsor, even though they very much are,” Rossi added. “I view them as my boss and also people that I can go to with questions, comments, concerns on how we improve and how we can get better. It’s a pretty unique opportunity to be a part of.
“They’re at every event, test. Ted was on my timing stand I think for every lap of every single session in St. Pete. It’s pretty cool to have someone that’s as important to our success be as involved as he is.”
Rossi finished a respectable 10th on debut for the team in St. Pete, gaining 10 positions from his starting spot of 20th. His teammate Rasmussen moved up from 24th to finish 15th in the race.
“The positives were it was a well-executed weekend for the most part,” Rossi said. “We’re pretty realistic in the sense we know street courses are not going to be our strong suit. Obviously you’re always hoping to find the big breakthrough and to be able to say that you can go into a weekend expecting to fight for a podium and a win.
“I think we realise that permanent road courses - obviously Thermal, Barber, Indy GP heading into Indianapolis - those are the races that we have on our calendar that are races we know we can be competitive at and fight for something pretty cool.
“St. Pete was one of those ones that, as a group, you want to get through together, understand everyone’s roles, diagnose things that need to be improved upon. Going into Thermal, for sure there’s a lot more emphasis on trying to get a result.”
Rossi was left disappointed by his qualifying display in St. Pete, prompting his race day recovery drive. But ultimately it was a promising first weekend, especially considering ECR’s pre-season test at Sebring was plagued by technical issues.
“The team gave me a much better car than I qualified. I made a mistake,” Rossi said. “That we finished 10th on the strategy ended up being the bad one was something that we were all pretty happy with. To come away with a 10th was a good thing. The team has a lot of potential.”
Rossi knows it will take a weekend of perfect execution to stand up to the likes of Team Penske and Chip Ganassi Racing. Despite the off-season investment at ECR, there is still a sense of managing expectations.
“This team has been afforded the opportunity over this off-season to really make some positive dents into things that maybe they couldn’t have touched in the past,” Rossi said. “That is all great and that is all super exciting. Also that doesn’t mean immediate results in any way, shape or form.
“To get to the level that we as competitors and people that want to win, it’s going to be a project and it’s going to take time. Nothing happens overnight. That does not mean that I don’t think we can be extremely competitive and win races this year at tracks that suit us.”
On a personal note, Rossi has found the transition to ECR easier than departing Andretti for Arrow McLaren after seven years ahead of the 2023 season. At that point, Arrow McLaren added a third car to what had previously been a two-car operation.
“This has been pretty much plug-and-play,” he said. “There were some personnel that shifted between the No.20 and No.21 [cars] but ultimately it’s all the same group. I would say it’s been exponentially easier than what I went through in ’23.”
Heading into the second round of the season at the Thermal Club - a first points-paying event at the track after last year’s exhibition event - morale is high at ECR. It will be a weekend of unknowns but the team had a “very, very good test” at the track in late 2024.
It also marks Rossi’s 149th start in IndyCar, meaning he will reach 150 races in IndyCar at Long Beach next month. Even though he self-admittedly “got smoked” on debut in 2016, Rossi’s love for the series has only continued to grow.
“When I came into the championship, it wasn’t a secret that this wasn’t my career trajectory as a kid,” said Rossi, who moved over from the Formula One world to pursue IndyCar. “I didn’t know a whole lot about the history of IndyCar or the 500.
“What a lot of people see is my passion for this championship and this sport has grown over my time here. I think I love it just as much as a Tony Kanaan who has been here for two-and-a-half decades.
“I will do everything in my power to continually help grow and promote this championship. For me, that’s something that comes easily just because I do love it and care for it.”
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