A familiar face is making his season debut this weekend in an unfamiliar number. After taking in the season-opening race at St Petersburg from pit lane, team owner Ed Carpenter puts his helmet back on this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway. The veteran oval ace is one of 27 cars entered in today’s XPEL 375 as his team field’s a third car for the race.
Carpenter joins his two full-time drivers, Rinus VeeKay and Conor Daly, as they take on the first oval race of the season. The 41-year old has not run a full season since 2013 and has traditionally shared the No. 20 entry with a driver that would only compete on the road and street courses. With Daly now in that No. 20 seat for every race weekend this year, Carpenter will instead run just the oval races in the No. 33 Chevrolet.
It is the perfect number for Carpenter, as the sole focus in his career has been winning the Indianapolis 500. In 18 starts at Indy, Carpenter has won pole position three times and has started 2nd on two other occasions. Last year he started 4th and finished 5th but his career-best finish came in 2018 when he led 65 laps and finished runner-up to Will Power.
The last seven years have been somewhat disappointing for the Butler graduate. Carpenter has just one pole and two podium finishes in his 38 starts since the 2014 season. He failed to finish in 15 of those 38 races.
With the fresh slate to start this season, Carpenter has his sights set on positive energy at Texas, and hopes that the team can carry momentum into the Month of May.
There are still three races between Texas and the Indy 500 but none of those are oval events. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Carpenter won’t be in the car until then, as there is an open test on April 20-21 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Teams and drivers will get their first taste of the IMS oval in one month, and ECR will once again be heavy favorites.
Daly and VeeKay dominated the early stages of the race last year, leading 72 of the 200…
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