The Grass is Not Always Greener
Yesterday, we got confirmation that Rinus VeeKay will be on the grid for the 2026 NTT IndyCar Series season. He will be piloting the car that Conor Daly drove for the entire 2025 campaign for Juncos Hollinger Racing (JHR). Hopefully, they have scrubbed the cockpit down in the car that Daly urinated in during this past Indianapolis 500.
VeeKay had a surprisingly strong season this past year while driving for Dale Coyne Racing (DCR). He had seven Top-Ten finishes, including one podium (second-place at Toronto) on his way to a fourteenth-place finish in the points standings. Daly finished eighteenth in the No. 76 JHR car last season. There is no word if the car VeeKay will be driving will remain No. 76 or have another number. There is also no confirmation that Sting Ray Robb will return to the JHR No. 77 car, even though he supposedly had a two year deal beginning this past season.
My question is…did Rinus VeeKay outsmart himself by leaving a good situation at Coyne, only to end up at JHR? And did JHR upgrade by signing VeeKay over Daly?
Although VeeKay has a race win on his resume, I personally think Daly is the better driver. He also has access to more funding, so to me – it’s a head-scratcher why JHR would choose VeeKay over Daly. I’m sure I’ll get pushback from some who think VeeKay is the superior driver, but that’s my opinion and I’m sticking with it.
The bigger question to me is why did Rinus VeeKay end up at JHR?
Juncos Hollinger Racing has a well-documented history of success in the junior circuits. But to say it has been a struggle on the IndyCar level is being kind. Their highest finishing driver was Callum Ilott, who finished 16th in 2023. They rewarded him for that effort by dropping him from the team late in the offseason, after all seats were in the process of being filled – mainly because he spoke out about getting death threats from fans of his teammate.
Romain Grosjean replaced Ilott and finished 17th the following year. But he was dropped in favor of Daly and he was unable to secure a ride for this season. To date, the one shining moment for Juncos was in May of 2019, when Kyle Kaiser bumped Fernando Alonso and McLaren out of the Indianapolis 500. That was the last time we ever saw Kaiser in an Indy car.
This past season, while Daly finished a decent (for them) 18th in points, Sting Ray Robb was having a very forgettable season – even by JHR standards. Robb had one Top-Ten finish (a ninth at Long Beach). Other than that, Robb’s best finish was a fourteenth at Portland. These results netted him 25th in points. Only Devlin DeFrancesco and Jacob Abel fared worse than Sting Ray Robb during the 2025 season. To me, it makes Conor Daly’s 18th-place finish in the point standings that much more impressive.
VeeKay was lucky to have a seat this past season, after he was justifiably jettisoned from his five-year run at Ed Carpenter Racing. He and Dale Coyne came together late in the offseason to fill the very last seat on the grid for the 2025 season. Things went surprisingly well for VeeKay and Coyne, especially after the return of engineer Michael Cannon to Coyne after the Indianapolis 500. The team seemed to get stronger as the season went along.
The day after Will Power confirmed he was leaving Team Penske, Rinus VeeKay informed a disappointed Dale Coyne that he would not be returning to DCR for 2026. I don’t know if he thought he might be tabbed for Power’s old seat at Penske, or if David Malukas got that ride as everyone expected – he could slide right into the Malukas seat at Foyt. My father used to have a saying; it sounds like VeeKay s**t in his mess kit. I never quite knew what that meant, but the gist of it is he screwed himself up. My father had a lot of sayings that I never fully understood. One of them involved a rolling donut, which I’m sure my brothers remember.
In the meantime, Malukas did move to Penske, Power moved to Andretti Global and it was made very clear that VeeKay would not be going to Foyt. While VeeKay was left to ponder his future, Dale Coyne was signing Indy NXT champion Dennis Hauger and forming a technical relationship with Andretti, who has just named former Team Penske Managing Director Ron Ruzewski as Team Principal.
While the future looks bright at DCR, Rinus VeeKay turned down an opportunity to return to the team where they generated so much momentum in 2025 – only to go to a team that has a history of finishing at or near the bottom of the standings each season.
Meanwhile, Conor Daly is out of a job and Dale Coyne still has an open seat. I think it would be poetic justice if Daly returns to a Dale Coyne team on the rise, while VeeKay struggles at JHR – simply because the grass seemed greener anywhere else besides Dale Coyne Racing.
After looking at the numbers, it might be easy to come to the conclusion that Juncos Hollinger Racing and Rinus VeeKay both played their hands for a better situation and lost. Some might even say they deserve each other.
George Phillips
Oilpressure 
October 15, 2025 at 9:47 am
I’m sorry George, but I’m going to have to strongly disagree that Daly is a better driver than Veekay… and I like Daly and hope to see him remain on the grid. Lest we forget, Veekay and Daly were teammates for 45 races at Carpenter and Daly was not close to Veekay during that time: Daly was 15-30 against Veekay head-to-head in qualifying and 18-27 against him in the races, while Veekay had 15 top 10 finishes to Daly’s 3, and 4 podiums to Daly’s 0.
Now, Veekay probably didn’t land in the position he thought he might when he decided to leave Coyne, but I think his decision to leave Coyne was an understandable one. Certainly things are looking up for Coyne next season, between Ault’s checkbook, Cannon, and the Andretti partnership… but the Andretti partnership appears to be tied directly to Coyne fielding Dennis Hauger and will not include the level of personnel support seen in partnerships such as Andretti-MSR, Ganassi-MSR, or Penske-Foyt if Marshall Pruett’s reporting is to be believed. And beyond that, the Hauger situation was likely in the process of happening when Veekay made his decision to leave Coyne, a situation that surely would have left Veekay in Coyne’s second car. That car finished a distant dead last in points this past season, and is a car which Veekay’s likely JHR teammate Sting Ray Robb refused to return to in 2024. Given this, one can see why Veekay might not be interested in playing second fiddle to a rookie backed directly by a Big 4 team owner while driving what has, in recent history, been a very bad car.
At JHR, Veekay gets to be the lead driver, is (based on speculation) getting paid more, and (also based on speculation) is getting the one year deal he desired so he can play in the very active free agent market for 2027. It might backfire spectacularly, but it seems a calculated risk to me.
October 18, 2025 at 6:47 pm
Not to pile on, because I typically agree with almost everything you post about George, but I must agree with Billy on the Veekay vs. Daly take. Not only do I think Rinus is a much better talent than Conor, I have to honestly say I’ve never understood people’s fascination with Daly. I get that he’s a really fun and popular guy so perhaps that’s why people love him so much. I don’t know. He’s had more than plenty of opportunities in the series and I guess I just don’t see it. Sure, he looks fast and fearless out there sometimes, so I suppose that makes him what? The American version of Mikhail Aleshin or E.J. Viso?
October 15, 2025 at 10:42 am
Sometimes the grass is greener because there is a septic leak.
FYI – postings look great without your old software, you seem to have it figured out.
October 15, 2025 at 1:08 pm
I’ve heard multiple places that VeeKay had to tap into his personal money at times last season just to keep going. That in itself is a solid enough reason to justify leaving Coyne.
October 16, 2025 at 11:28 am
Only Hauger is getting Andretti support so Veekay would have had to step down the the 51 team which is the slowest car on the grid. I’m not sure he moved up much but a little bit at least. Any team that moves on from Conor Daly has made a wise choice.
October 19, 2025 at 9:59 am
Throw in Zak’s games over at McLaren (jerking Rossi around, and probably others) and you’ve got a real mess.