IndyCar: The top free agent not getting nearly enough attention

Very few teams have their entire driver lineups set for the 2025 IndyCar season, with Andretti Global, Arrow McLaren, and Team Penske being the three that have solidified their three-car rosters for next year.

With the addition of Prema Racing and their two entries to the grid for next year, there are eight teams that still need to make one or more decisions about who they want in their cars next year.

One team with two empty seats for next year is Ed Carpenter Racing, where Rinus VeeKay has spent each of the first five seasons of his IndyCar career behind the wheel of the No. 21 Chevrolet.

VeeKay is without a contract to compete beyond the 2024 season, yet his name has not been brought up nearly as often as it should when it comes to discussions about potential landing spots for soon-to-be free agents.

The 23-year-old Dutchman finished in either 12th or 14th place in each of his first four IndyCar seasons, and he recorded eight top five finishes, including a win and three additional podium finishes, during that stretch.

VeeKay only sits in 15th place in this year's championship standings, but his success as of late has flown under the radar.

He is the only driver to have finished each of the four most recent races inside the top 10, and he quietly sits in sixth place in the oval standings, trailing only drivers named Scott McLaughlin, Josef Newgarden, Scott Dixon, Pato O'Ward, and Alex Palou.

Considering the relatively obvious fact that Ed Carpenter Racing are not where they were performance-wise just a few short years ago, leading to rumors (which have been denied) that they could be up for sale, VeeKay's success has been even more impressive.

He has twice as many top 10 finishes in the four most recent races as he had all of last year, and the tracks coming up on the schedule should suit him and perhaps produce a further rise up the standings.

The Milwaukee Mile is another short oval and is set to host a doubleheader, VeeKay finished in a season-high sixth place at Portland International Raceway last year, and while Nashville Superspeedway looks a lot more like Texas Motor Speedway than a typical short track, the short track aero configuration is set to be used for the season finale.

More teams need to be giving VeeKay a call, if they haven't already.

Ed Carpenter Racing should be doing whatever they can to keep him to maintain some stability as they aim to get back to the front on a more consistent basis and pursue their first win since his lone win at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in May 2021.

A.J. Foyt Enterprises still have an open seat after signing David Malukas, a signing that leaves Meyer Shank Racing in need of another driver, and Juncos Hollinger Racing need a full-time replacement for Agustin Canapino.

Prema Racing have been linked to anybody and everybody who has ever sat in an open-wheel race car, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing need to replace the McLaren-bound Christian Lundgaard and potentially the struggling Pietro Fittipaldi, and Chip Ganassi Racing could run from anywhere between three to five cars next year.

Dale Coyne Racing probably isn't too attractive of an option, given the year they've had, but the recent success had by Toby Sowery in his first two career starts shows that perhaps it's the drivers more so than it is the cars behind the team's struggles.

While the 2024 season has undoubtedly been their worst in quite some time, Dale Coyne's team have always been a relative small, underfunded operation.

Yet only once in the last 12 years have they gone a full season without a podium finish, and that season was also the only season during that 12-year stretch during which they did not have a full-time driver (2015), just like they don't this season. So even they could have some untapped upside for a talented driver like VeeKay.

At least five or six of these eight teams should be on the phone with VeeKay.

One thing that VeeKay knows he has at Ed Carpenter Racing every year is a fast race car at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Indy 500, and that could be enough to make him feel that staying put is his best option. Unless he can land a big contract with a championship contender elsewhere, that would certainly make sense.

In five Indy 500 starts, he has qualified on the front row three times and never started worse than seventh place, and that seventh even came after a qualifying crash that initially looked like it would put him in Bump Day conversation. His average starting position is 3.8.

But he has never finished higher than he started. In fact, his best finish is worse than his worst starting spot, and while team owner Ed Carpenter always takes exception to the assertion that his cars don't race as well as they qualify, that is going to be the ongoing narrative until one of them finally wins.

Three times a polesitter for the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing", Carpenter himself hasn't been able to do that.

While there hasn't been a ton of chatter about VeeKay's IndyCar future, he is certainly one to keep an eye on as silly season progresses and the puzzle pieces continue to fall into place as they pertain to the 2025 driver lineup.