TORONTO — Rinus VeeKay drove his No. 21 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet to an eighth-place finish in Sunday’s (July 21) Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto, his third top-10 result in the last three races.
VeeKay previously took a fifth-place finish at the first race of the Hy-Vee IndyCar Race Weekend at Iowa Speedway before finishing ninth in the second 250-mile race of that weekend. Then, after a first-lap crash eliminated his teammate Christian Rasmussen, VeeKay quietly drove through a chaotic race to bring home his fifth top 10 of the 2024 NTT IndyCar Series season.
“It was a crazy race,” VeeKay told Frontstretch. “I didn’t know that that many people would get out of that one incident at turn 1. Anyway, I avoided most of the trouble. It’s very unfortunate for Christian of course, but it happens at this place; turn 1 is treacherous.”
Like it did in 2023, turn 1 of the temporary street circuit winding around Toronto’s Exhibition Place was quick to interrupt the action with a multi-car incident on the race’s opening lap. Along with Rasmussen, Santino Ferrucci sustained damage in the opening melee.
“We had a clean race,” VeeKay continued. “I’m happy with that. Really, it wasn’t that much passing. It’s quite hard to get by another car, but we made a few good passes, had some good runs. Toward the end we chose to go to new sticker [Firestone Alternate tires], which I think was a really good call.
“Unfortunately in the turn-5 stack-up, I damaged the front wing so I [fell] to the back a little bit but moved forward again so I’m pretty happy. It was a solid day. This is one of those days where you don’t really need to do much special and just finish and stay out of the problems, and that’s what we did.”
After sticking on fresh Firestone Alternate tires for his final stint, VeeKay went on a tear and passed four cars in the final five laps to come home in the top 10 after starting 22nd.
It’s fitting that the Dutchman referred to the race as both crazy and clean in a matter of seconds, as he had to narrowly avoid a massive crash which brought out the red flag with 12 laps remaining in order to complete the…
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