Rinus VeeKay IndyCar Driver Profile: The Dutch Racer overdelivering at Juncos Hollinger in 2026
Rinus VeeKay IndyCar fans have been watching something genuinely unexpected unfold in 2026. The 25-year-old from Hoofddorp, Netherlands, arrived at Juncos Hollinger Racing as a solid midfield operator. What he has delivered is a top-10 championship season with a small team that had never previously placed a driver inside the top 16. This is not a feel-good story. It is a quiet statement of ability.
Rinus VeeKay IndyCar: Fast Facts
- Date of birth: 11 September 2000
- Born in: Hoofddorp, Netherlands
- Nationality: Dutch
- Current team: Juncos Hollinger Racing
- Car number: No. 76 Chevrolet
Rinus VeeKay IndyCar: 2026 Season at Juncos Hollinger Racing
VeeKay competes full-time with Juncos Hollinger Racing in 2026, driving the No. 76 Chevrolet. The season started encouragingly. VeeKay opened the campaign with a run to ninth at St. Petersburg. Then came the result that changed the conversation. He captured the team’s best-ever finish at the Indianapolis 500, driving the No. 76 Chevy to sixth, and with three top-six results since May 24, he rose to 11th in the standings, another all-time best for the team.
VeeKay earned his third top-five finish in the past five races and sits 10th in the points in what is shaping up as his best career season. To put that in context: Juncos Hollinger Racing had never placed a driver inside the top 10 of the championship, with a 16th-place result in 2023 the best it had previously managed. VeeKay has taken the team into genuinely unfamiliar territory as the No. 76 Chevy holds 10th in the IndyCar drivers’ standings.
The chemistry with the team is clearly real. “The vibe in the team, the connection, is great,” he said. “The engineer and I work together well, but the whole team, everybody’s kind of flawless out there. We’re working like we should. We’re a well-oiled machine.”
Career Highlights and Road to Indy
Rinus VeeKay, born Rinus van Kalmthout on September 11, 2000, in Hoofddorp, Netherlands, grew up in a family that loved racing. The pathway to IndyCar was meticulous. He is the first driver to win at all four levels of the Road to Indy program, winning six races in Indy Lights in 2019, seven races and the Indy Pro 2000 championship in 2018, and three races in USF2000 in 2017.
A graduate of INDY NXT by Firestone, VeeKay was named NTT INDYCAR SERIES Rookie of the Year in 2020 and earned his first career victory at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in May 2021 with Ed Carpenter Racing. The win itself showed exactly who he is as a racer. VeeKay sliced through the center of Palou and Jimmie Johnson on a gutsy three-wide pass early in the race, then chased down polesitter Romain Grosjean to take his first lead on Lap 45.
His relationship with Indianapolis Motor Speedway deserves a separate paragraph. He remains the youngest front-row starter in Indianapolis 500 history, and started from the front two rows in his first four Indy 500 starts, including three consecutive front-row starts between 2021 and 2023. Mentored by two-time Indy 500 winner and fellow Dutchman Arie Luyendyk, VeeKay is the first Dutch winner in IndyCar since 2007.
Driving Style and Personality
VeeKay is an attacker. He overtakes when most drivers are still calculating. That three-wide move at IMS in 2021 was not luck. It was a pattern. He has built a reputation as one of the finer oval drivers in the IndyCar Series. Yet his 2026 road course numbers suggest the gap between VeeKay the oval specialist and VeeKay the complete package is closing fast. At Mid-Ohio he fended off Alex Palou while chasing Kyle Kirkwood to the finish, earning the team’s best-ever result on a road course.
Off the track, he is quietly unusual. He married longtime partner Carmen in 2023, a professional boxer with an undefeated kickboxing record of 28-0. He sets ambitious targets without theatre. When asked about his goals at JHR, he said: “I always like to make it hard on everybody when I race. My goal is to make Juncos Hollinger Racing one of the top teams.”
That is not bravado. Given what the No. 76 has done in 2026, it is starting to look like a genuine roadmap. With five races remaining and momentum firmly on VeeKay’s side, the team has a real chance to finish inside the championship top 10 for the first time in its history. For a Dutchman who has already rewritten several record books, the next chapter looks compelling. Follow open-wheel racing coverage and results, including Felix Rosenqvist’s IndyCar season and Scott Dixon’s latest campaign, right here on rnt-motorsports.com. For the latest on how F1’s engine regulations are shaping the wider motorsport landscape, read our breakdown of the F1 2026 ADUO engine development results revealed by the FIA.