INDIANAPOLIS — Coming into last weeks Indy 500, Ed Carpenter Racing had led no laps during the first five races of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES season and suffered some bad results to go along with that fact. Rinus VeeKay sat 18th in points. His finishes were 21st, 11th, 26th, 16th and 13th respectively. Teammate, Conor Daly was 24th. He finished 14th, 20th, 23rd, 25th and 19th himself.

Then each scored double top-10 finishes to turn this season back around again.

On Saturday, though, neither of them advanced out of the first round of qualifying for Sunday’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix (3 p.m. ET, NBC, INDYCAR Radio Network). However, they also did find some speed with noting and that gives them reason for optimism entering the 100 lap affair on Sunday afternoon in Motown.

“This is our best street course qualifying of the year, it is a big step forward for us,” said Daly who qualified 15th in his No. 20 Dallara-Chevrolet. “We’re in good company where we are starting, Alex Rossi is right in front us.”

Daly said that what was impressive was the fact that he gained so much time between practice and qualifying. His best lap of the weekend prior to hopping into his car to qualify for Sunday’s race was 1:04.8780-seconds. In that qualifying session, his top lap was 1:02.9522-seconds.

Part of that was the fact that he struggled to find a clear track to put a hot lap down on. With Detroit only being 1.7-miles in length and 27 cars here this weekend, finding a clear track is rather difficult. As a result, the lap times maybe aren’t as indicative of true pace as they typically would be.

Also, without being able to power down, you don’t know what direction to trim your car out for qualifying to go in.

“We hadn’t had any clear laps all day, that entire first session I didn’t get one clean lap where I got to go fast through Turns 6 and 7,” Daly continued. “Qualifying was the first time I actually got to feel what the grip increase was like. We can work from here! It’s going to be crazy tomorrow, hopefully we can stay out of the chaos.”

Daly has earned his best street course qualifying position of the year (26th St. Pete, 27th Long Beach). He was assigned to Round 1, Group 1 of qualifying. The course distance (1.7 miles) and 10-minute session allowed Daly time to turn 8 laps, all of which were on Firestone’s alternate green Firehawk tire. His final lap was his fastest by nearly a second and earned him the 15th starting position in tomorrow’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix. 

Previously, he qualified 26th, 25th, 27th, 20th, 21st and 16th. Also,

Daly has competed in four NTT INDYCAR SERIES doubleheaders in the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix and made his 9th Detroit start in the free-standing race last year. In the 2022 event, Daly narrowly missed advancing to the second round of qualifying, gained two positions during the final lap and finished 12th. The previous track layout is home to his best NTT INDYCAR SERIES finish to date as the first of the 2016 races awarded him a second place finish.

VeeKay starts one spot up in 14th. The thing is, a margin of just .0011 of a second separated the Dutch driver from the second round of qualifications in Detroit this afternoon. He started on the primary black Firehawk before switching to the alternate green tire. He turned nine laps during Round 1, Group 2 and was bumped down to 7th in the closing seconds. He will start from 14th on the new Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix layout. 

“Missed it by one thousandth of a second,” said VeeKay. “That’s just carrying a little bit of speed in one corner or hitting a bump differently. It’s so tight. We had the pace to transfer! It was hard getting everything out of the tire. Yesterday, the track was so much different when we ran green tires.

“Also this morning, it was much more traffic than actual clean laps. Pretty proud of the effort! It’s good to be that close to advancing. We are trending in the right direction. It’s been a tough season, but there’s a lot of positive energy from the Indy 500 even though the race could have ended a lot differently. I am proud of the guys! They put a lot of effort. I am pretty happy, the car felt pretty good, and a really good job by the team coming into a new track. We’ll pass some cars tomorrow!”

VeeKay had never driven on the streets of Belle Isle in any series until the opening NTT INDYCAR SERIES practice in 2021. Less than 24 hours later, his first race in Detroit ended with a podium finish as he took the checkered flag in the 2nd position. He was running in the Top 10 in last year’s event when the No. 21 slid in into the Turn 6 tire barrier, resulting in a 16th place finish.