Ed Carpenter Racing’s Rinus VeeKay in the No.21 BitNile Chevrolet had a great PPG375 at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday as the Dutch driver carved his way through the field from 26th on the grid to finish the first oval INDYCAR series race of the season just outside the top ten in P11.
Speaking following the race, VeeKay commented saying:
I had a pretty good day out there! Yesterday was a struggle, qualifying as far back as I’ve ever qualified! Today I was the biggest mover, from P26 up to P11. I’m happy, I had a lot of fun. I wish I had two laps more! It was tight out there, a lot of butt squeezing! On to Long Beach, let’s keep this going!”
Team owner Ed Carpenter started his first race of the season in P18 and finished the race in 13th place in the No.33 BitNile Chevrolet and speaking following the race, he commented saying:
I thought the race was a lot of fun, I hope everyone really enjoyed it. I feel like the work that INDYCAR did made the product better for sure. I am a little disappointed with where we finished, I don’t think it’s representative of the car we had today. We kind of missed it on a couple of decisions late in the race that held us back. I feel like we for sure had a Top 10 car, we may not have had the speed to be in the Top 5 so we do still have work to do. I am happy we put on a good show for BITNILE.COM and Circle 8 Cranes, they had a really great group here. This was a good start to the season and I feel really good heading into Indy.”
Conor Daly in the No.20 BitNile Chevrolet started the race from P25 and came home in 20th place and speaking following the race he commented saying:
I struggled today, for sure. I was glad to see our other two BITNILE.COM cars have a good day, but I just could not find the balance I needed. It was kind of trying to hang on for dear life most of the time. That was a shame, we did get a little better at the end but we had already lost too much ground. It was a shame for us, I hate to leave Texas like this. But, all of the cars are in one piece and we’ll move on to Long Beach and be better there.