Written by Archie O’Reilly, Edited by Morgan Holiday
It has been 13 years since Ed Carpenter Racing (ECR) first entered IndyCar. And since its inception in 2012, there has never been as big of a new dawn for the team as there is heading into the 2025 season.
It is Year 14 for the team owned by IndyCar veteran Ed Carpenter - one of which was run in collaboration with Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing in 2015. Starting this year, Carpenter will be supported by a new co-owner, Indianapolis-based business owner Ted Gelov.
“In a lot of ways it feels like 2012, just because there’s so much new,” Carpenter said. “We haven’t had this much newness since we started the team back in 2012. It’s been an active off-season.”
Gelov, owner of Heartland Food Products Group, has brought much-needed fresh investment to the team. Heartland’s consumer brands Splenda and Java House Coffee are adorned on the sidepods of ECR’s two Chevrolet-powered cars as title sponsors in 2025.
After a challenging year of many bare-looking sidepods across the 2024 season, ECR has been able to hire its two drivers, Alexander Rossi and the returning Christian Rasmussen, at will for 2025.
“Ted, he’s a very smart and successful guy,” said Carpenter. “He’s built a business from nothing to what it is today, which is very impressive. He and his entire organisation, they’re an asset to us - especially on the business side of things - that’s expanded our operation and created new opportunities and resources that we haven’t had.
“Then as we shift that towards the on-track product, I think it’s just allowing us to maybe move a little quicker, make decisions a little earlier and be slightly more aggressive in what we’re trying to do to accomplish our goals of winning races, winning the 500 and being a contender in the championship.”
Back in its early days, this team was an outfit that had the ability to win races.
Carpenter won the final race of the team’s first season in Fontana. Mike Conway won Long Beach and Toronto in 2014, along with Carpenter’s own success at Texas Motor Speedway after stepping back from full-time competition that year.
Some of the team's most fruitful days came with Josef Newgarden at the wheel. The merger with Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing for 2015, forming CFH Racing, saw Newgarden win twice to finish seventh in points. With ECR its own entity again - and with two cars by season’s end - Newgarden would go on to win Iowa and finish fourth in the standings in 2016.
But Newgarden left for Team Penske the following year, where he won the title at his first attempt. His fourth-place finish for ECR in 2016 has not been beaten and the team has won only one race since 2016, with Rinus VeeKay in 2021.
VeeKay’s 12th place in the standings in 2021 and 2022 is as good as it has gotten for ECR since Newgarden departed almost a decade ago. In the eyes of Carpenter, it was time for some change this off-season.
In bringing new partners onboard, Carpenter has jumped on what he feels is a wave of momentum building in the IndyCar paddock, whether triggered from the series’ first-ever charter system or the fresh broadcast deal with FOX Sports.
There are some new recruits on the engineering side, but instead of overhauling personnel, the priority for Carpenter has been elevating what is already in place at the team.
“There’s the addition of some of the shared resources and capabilities that they have within [Gelov’s] business,” Carpenter said. “When you roll into the shop, it has a very similar look to last year. I would just say it’s more just adding layers to capabilities.”
The team has also used this opportunity to rebrand somewhat too, which Carpenter first considered before the ownership addition. All of this signifies a fresh start of sorts.
“It seemed like a good time to do it,” Carpenter said. “To reinvent ourselves isn’t the right word but just to take the next step as an organisation. We want to send the message that we want to be better and stronger.
“Obviously changing the logo doesn’t do that but it is part of the process and sending the message internally and externally that we’re doing things a little different than how we have in the past. So just one piece of the puzzle.”
Possibly the biggest statement was the signing of 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner Rossi, who carries into his 10th season in IndyCar experience from his time with two of the series’ leading teams, Andretti Autosport and, in the last two years, Arrow McLaren.
It has been made abundantly clear that this is the start of a longer-term project for ECR, with both Rossi and the returning Rasmussen signed to multi-year deals. As a result of these changes,, five years at the team for VeeKay - a consistent servant with one win, four podiums and five championship finishes between 12th and 14th - came to a close.
While he never matched the same heights in terms of results, VeeKay has been the team’s best performer since Newgarden left for Penske.
“Everything we do is a team decision and there’s a lot of conversations and a lot of thought, debate process that goes into it,” Carpenter said of the decision to move on from VeeKay, who has since joined Dale Coyne Racing for 2025.
“Ted was a part of the team at that point, so he was for sure a part of the conversation. But it wasn’t solely one person’s call.”
While VeeKay’s departure seemed to come quite suddenly, Carpenter only has good things to say about ECR’s longest-tenured driver in its history.
“I have nothing but respect and appreciation for the years we had with Rinus,” he said. “I still consider him a really good friend and a really talented driver. He deserves to be here. It’s never easy to make those decisions, but we just felt like it was time to move in a different direction.
“It could have easily been Rinus and Alex instead of Christian, but we made the decision that we thought was best for our team. I’m not going to go into all the details of why and how we got to that exact decision, but I think the important thing is we had five really good years together.”
Resetting ahead of 2025, it was important for Carpenter to make the team as attractive a prospect as possible for partners and drivers. It may have helped slightly that he shares a plane with Rossi, but the eight-time race winner did not join ECR on a whim.
And in light of the addition of Rossi, 2023 Indy NXT champion Rasmussen returning for his sophomore season and all of the other internal changes, Carpenter hopes the team’s potential has been raised.
“Anytime you’re out signing drivers or re-signing drivers, we have to sell ourselves and what our vision is for the future,” Carpenter said. “Alex and I have had a relationship for a while now. But this is now a different relationship.
“He bought into what we’re doing. I think he’s felt pretty comfortable within our organisation from the first time he visited the building. We’re off to a really good start and hopefully it’ll be the start of us getting back to the success that we had in the earlier days of our team.
“There’s a lot of effort going into it. We haven’t been happy with the ultimate results that we’ve gotten over the past couple of years so we couldn’t just keep doing the same thing.”
Even in his relatively brief amount of time with the team (having been announced in late September), Rossi has observed a lot of change himself. He is encouraged by the project, of which he is a leading part in the team’s No.20 Chevy.
“It’s growing and changing every day, so what you saw in October, it’s going to be a very different look come February and March,” he said. “I think we’re all trying to find our place a little bit in somewhat of a totally new organisation. But it’s going really well.”
More than simply having the funding, the most important steps for ECR to build back into a race-winning outfit will be using the funding wisely.
“Funding and money isn’t the solution to everyone’s problems,” Rossi said. “It certainly gives you the capability to have a better rate of development; it gives you the opportunity to maybe entice people into your organisation and that sort of thing. But it’s still about the people.
“I do think that a lot of the main people that are at ECR currently have been there for a very long time. There’s a lot of loyalty in that organisation and there’s a very close-knit group of individuals that, in their own right and together, are very, very good at what they do.
“They’ve maybe just not had all of the tools, resources and people to help them deliver the results that they are capable of.
“I think number one is people, number two is growing the good people and creating that environment, then number three is having the available funds to go do the projects and build the things that you need to do.”
Rossi joins ECR with only one win in five seasons since the introduction of the aeroscreen. Before that, in 2018 and 2019, he finished second and third in the championship standings with Andretti and won seven times. His two seasons with Arrow McLaren saw him finish ninth and 10th in the standings, with his best results being a third-place finish in each year.
In many ways, Rossi and the ECR team are in very similar positions as they look to rediscover their best form. And it is not going to be an immediate thing - Rossi himself has described it as a “long-term” project.
“Where they’ve been the past couple years is not where they want to be, where they expect to be,” Rossi said. “So there was the effort and the search for: how do they and we as an organisation change what the past couple of years have been?
“What do we need to do from a staffing, investment, procedure, mindset standpoint to bridge the gap and make the step that everyone else is making? That’s a work in progress. That doesn’t happen overnight.
“But I certainly think that steps are being made in the right direction - steps that are very cool to see. I think there’s the potential to surprise a lot of people at points in 2025.
“We’re not going to go from the results that have existed the past couple of years to all of a sudden winning every race, but I do think that everything in this sport is very small margins. This car has been around for so long - it’s not that there’s some magic thing out there.
“It’s about putting puzzle pieces together correctly and executing efficiently and that can add up to results pretty quickly. We have the tools and resources and are gathering the tools and resources that didn’t necessarily exist in the past and that’s opening doors and opportunities for what should be a step forward for the organisation in ‘25.”
From a personal side, Rossi expects the move to ECR to be more seamless than when he joined Arrow McLaren and also had to make the Honda-to-Chevy transition. He will not have to undergo anything like the change in driving style he did in 2023.
On the other side of the garage, Carpenter had a call to make between keeping hold of VeeKay or Rasmussen. Ultimately, ECR has long been a proving ground for budding talent - a bill which Rasmussen still fits after only one season in the series.
If there was to be an overhaul, VeeKay would unfortunately end up as the fall guy given the length of time he had spent with the team.
“I think we see a lot of upside with Christian,” Carpenter said. “It’s really hard to be a rookie in this sport. We weren’t as good as we needed to be last year. I don’t think our problem was with our driver lineup necessarily - we weren’t good enough as a whole. But Christian continued to develop.”
Rasmussen was initially only set to run in the Indianapolis 500, where ECR is traditionally strong, and on road and street courses. But for the final three races of the season, with the No.20 Chevy in Leaders’ Circle trouble, Carpenter opted to sideline himself from his oval-only programme - split with Rasmussen - in favour of his rookie driver.
“I learned a lot about what he’s made of when we put him in a really tough position when I got out of the car at the end of last year and how he dealt with the pressure of closing out and keeping us in the Leaders’ Circle,” Carpenter said.
“I’m expecting a big year from him. I think he has a tonne of talent and potential and I think we’ll see that this year.”
Rasmussen rewarded Carpenter’s faith late in the 2024 season, with finishes of 11th, 16th and 14th across the two Milwaukee Mile races and Nashville Superspeedway finale securing a crucial second Leaders’ Circle contract - and its financial reward - for the team.
“I think it was super good,” Rasmussen said of the chance to get more of a taste on ovals before his first full season in 2025. “It was a good opportunity for me to practice and get a feel for what the ovals outside of the 500 feels like because the 500 is a different beast.
“It was good to figure out what I need to do better, what I did well and then take that experience into 2025 so that we can be even better. I think overall I was in a decent spot. I was comfortable and we were decently quick.”
On the flip side, 2025 marks the first time Carpenter has only run the Indy 500. He has partaken in an oval programme ever since he stepped back from full-time IndyCar competition in 2013.
“As I get older and the team matures and has challenges and opportunities, it was getting harder and harder for me to keep my focus and time everywhere it needed to be all the time - much like when I made the decision to not run the full season and step away from road courses,” Carpenter said.
“I think Christian, when he got in the car to finish the year on the ovals, he did a good job and did what I thought he was going to do and ultimately did a better job than I did.
“I’ve always said I’ll put the team first. I think I bring the most value to Indianapolis at this point, so that’s where I’m going to focus my energies as a driver.”
Rasmussen’s rookie year was solid and he certainly improved as the season progressed. He ended the year 22nd in the standings despite only running 14 of the 17 races, with a run to 12th in the Indy 500, ninth at Mid-Ohio and 11th at Milwaukee being headline results.
The Danish driver believes “ECR is on the rise” and is keen to get even more out of himself as a sophomore this year.
“Always expecting more,” Rasmussen said. “I think the [2024] season was a little bit up and down. We had pretty good pace in multiple locations but never really had many results to show for it. This year it’s focusing on transferring that speed into results.
“Having a year under your belt is a huge change. I felt like towards the end of the year things started to click. The results were reflecting that.”
Now with a multi-year deal, there is some added security for Rasmussen, who has often been in situations in his career where he has had to win in order to fund the following season as he made his way up the ranks. But the pressure is never off.
“It’s nice to know in the back of your mind that there’s some sort of security going forward,” he said. “But it’s racing. Everything can happen. You’re never 100 percent secure. You always have to perform to stay. That’s the mindset that I’m going in with.”
Off the back of a productive off-season for ECR, the expectations are naturally going to rise - the drivers know that. This is a team that has gone dormant and is desperate to erupt once more and return to its former front-running ways.
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