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IndyCar: Sage Karam to drive for Carlin at Iowa Speedway

By Asher Fair

FORT WORTH, TX - JUNE 05: Sage Karam, driver of the #8 Lexar Chevrolet, looks on during practice for the Verizon IndyCar Series Firestone 600 at Texas Motor Speedway on June 5, 2015 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Rainier Ehrhardt/Getty Images for Texas Motor Speedway)
FORT WORTH, TX - JUNE 05: Sage Karam, driver of the #8 Lexar Chevrolet, looks on during practice for the Verizon IndyCar Series Firestone 600 at Texas Motor Speedway on June 5, 2015 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Rainier Ehrhardt/Getty Images for Texas Motor Speedway) /
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Sage Karam is set to make his third start of the 2019 IndyCar season in the Iowa 300 at Iowa Speedway in what is set to be his second start driving for Carlin.

After making his first non-Indianapolis 500 IndyCar start since the 2015 season in this past Sunday’s Honda Indy Toronto at Exhibition Place driving for Carlin, Sage Karam is set to return to the team in this Saturday night’s race, the Iowa 300, at Iowa Speedway.

This start is set to be Karam’s third start of the 17-race 2019 season through its first 12 races, as he also drove for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing in the Indy 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway back in late May.

Only once in his IndyCar career has the 24-year-old Nazareth, Pennsylvania native made more than one start in a season, and that was in the 2015 season when he drove in 12 of the season’s 16 races for Chip Ganassi Racing.

Here is what Carlin team principal Trevor Carlin had to say about his team bringing Karam back for this race, according to IndyCar.

"“We were very impressed with Sage’s steady progression throughout the Toronto race weekend and his willingness to learn and adapt. The fact that he hadn’t been on a street course since 2015 and was still able to come right out of the gate confident and constantly improving every session was extremely impressive.”"

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Karam is set to drive the #31 Chevrolet, which he drove in the Honda Indy Toronto, in this Saturday night’s 300-lap race around the four-turn, 0.894-mile (1.439-kilometer) Iowa Speedway oval in Newton, Iowa

Karam has competed at Iowa Speedway before and has had a ton of success in doing so. In five races at the track, he has collected four victories and an average finishing position of 1.40. He won the U.S. F2000 National Championship race there in the 2010 season en route to winning the championship before winning the Star Mazda Championship races there in the 2011 and 2012 seasons and the Indy Lights race there in the 2013 season en route to winning the championship.

Most notably, Iowa Speedway is the site of Karam’s career-high finish in IndyCar through the first 18 starts of his career, as he finished in third place there in the 2015 season following a memorable late battle with Ed Carpenter when youth prevailed over experience, much to the chagrin of IndyCar’s lone oval specialist.

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Don’t miss NBC Sports Network’s live broadcast of this Saturday night’s Iowa 300 from Iowa Speedway. The 2019 IndyCar season’s 11th race is scheduled to begin at 7:10 p.m. ET, and the live broadcast is set to begin shortly beforehand at 7:00 p.m. ET.