Ed Carpenter racing is in a bit of a stable period, at least as far as its driver lineup is concerned. The team is still working hard to improve in other areas, including bringing in athletes from other sports to help improve their results.
Fueling Rinus VeeKay’s #21 entry this season will be a former lineman from the NFL, who has no trouble wrangling the heavy fuel hose with consistency when it’s needed most.
The new member of the team also has no trouble keeping up with the team’s renewed focus on fitness and efficiency, which will hopefully translate to performance at the track.
“There’s some new guys that came in,” revealed VeeKay to MotorsportWeek.com. “Actually an ex NFL offensive lineman, from the [Denver] Broncos. He’s refueling.
“He’s 360 pounds of pure muscle, it’s crazy. We call him Big Ben. So there’s some more athleticism in the team. We also have a D1 [college football] quarterback as a system engineer, so there’s some more young blood coming into the team, which I think is really good. It brings more a bit more energy to the team.
“I feel like it’s been better than it’s been for the time I’ve been at ECR.”
Only partially due to the boost from his newest team member, VeeKay has a good feeling for the upcoming season, which is his fourth with ECR.
That familiarity has given him and his crew plenty of time to learn to communicate well, to the point that each side of the equation can almost predict each other.
“I know what the team needs, and the team knows what I need,” continued the Dutchman. “We speak the same language. Especially as a foreigner, you give feedback and it can be understood differently.
“I remember in my rookie season there was some confusion sometimes, but right now my engineer knows which questions to ask to extract the most info. There’s a good atmosphere in the team.
“Good morale, yeah. Everyone’s excited. Everyone knows we did well last year. There’s always parts we can improve on, but I think it’s going to be good.”
