Daly gets full-time IndyCar seat at Carpenter with cryptocurrency sponsor

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Conor Daly will race full-time in IndyCar for Ed Carpenter Racing this year after the team landed a new sponsorship deal with a cryptocurrency mining company.

Daly contested the full IndyCar season in 2021 but divided his duties between the Carpenter squad and Carlin, contesting the oval events for the latter.

Carpenter has announced a “multi-year” deal with BitNile which will see Daly drive their number 20 car in all 17 races of this year’s championship, which begins at St Petersburg next month.

Daly placed 18th in the championship last year. The team subsequently announced it had lost the backing of the US Air Force which sponsored Daly’s car in 2021.

This year will be the first time Daly has contested every round of the IndyCar series for the same team since his 2017 stint at Foyt. “Being chosen to represent BitNile is without a doubt one of the most important opportunities of my career,” he said.

“This is an incredible partnership that we look forward to being able to strengthen and grow as we go after race wins together.”

As well as being the primary sponsor of Daly’s car, BitNile will be an associate sponsor of the number 21 Carpenter entry driven by Rinus VeeKay. Carpenter ran sponsorship from cryptocurrency, Bitcon, on VeeKay’s car at the Indianapolis 500 last year.

Team owner Ed Carpenter will drive a third car for the team at this year’s Indy 500. He is weighing up whether to participate in the four other oval races on the schedule, which are at Texas, Gateway and a double-header at Iowa.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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11 comments on “Daly gets full-time IndyCar seat at Carpenter with cryptocurrency sponsor”

  1. It baffles me that people like Conor Daly keep getting seats in Indycar.

    I guess good on him for being able to drum up enough financial support, even if the reasoning seems questionable.

    1. Do you even watch Indycar? Daly is a solid pair of hands and has been almost like a “supersub” for the past few years. I’m glad to see he now has a full time ride. He has always had trouble drumming up sponsorship, but you can tell he’s passionate about the series from his persistence.

      1. but you can tell he’s passionate about the series from his persistence.

        Having now looked at his Wikipedia page, I might have a different theory as to how Conor Daly ends up racing an Indycar over and over again, despite his track record.

  2. There seems to be a lot of crypto money swilling around motorsports and other sports sponsorship. I’m generally sceptical of much of crypto as a concept, and I do wonder if at some point there will be a crunch, of which some teams and drivers might become casualties.

    1. Crypto currencies are a scam, and they’re generally bad for the environment too. This blog post pretty much sums up my feelings on them. Now is it any worse than tobacco money in motorsports, I don’t know?

      https://vivaldi.com/blog/why-vivaldi-will-never-create-thinkcoin/

  3. By coincidence, I saw this story after reading this article about cryptocurrency adverts on the London Underground, which talks to some of my concerns https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/14/cryptocurrency-ads-london-transport-tfl I don’t question BitNile in particular (I know nothing about them), but there are some shady operators in the sector.

  4. Good for Conor, but a full season along side Veekay will be make or break. Hope RHR lands somewhere too.

    Crypto sponsorship is no worse than Rich Energy, RoKIT, or Essex Petroleum, say, so teams should take their money (assuming it ever turns up). Look at the Chip Ganassi’s NASCAR ponzi scheme sponsor, DC Solar.

    Shame that crypto is such an incredible waste of electricity/processing power, but then one can argue driving in circles is too.

    The $2.5m dollars that this ride is estimated to cost is small change to a crypto marketing budget.

  5. Crypto is not a scam at all, yes there are some criminals creating hype tokens then making off with profits aka rug pull, but there are many many decent projects with real uses.

    As for the environment, yes mining coins is not great but many projects especially new ones are moving away from mining. You can’t even mine the majority of coins.

    Crypto is here to stay and it will become the future of finance. And in the long run will be far more environmentally friendly than traditional money/banking.

    1. While it is conceptually interesting, crypto right now (after about a decade) is about making money off of rubes, laundering/hiding money, illegal transactions, and destroying the environment all the while. Even with all of the high minded rhetoric behind it, those who have taken advantage first will undoubtedly compromise the whole project to protect their own new wealth. It is good to remember that if you did not construct the scam, then you are probably the mark. It is also good to remember that exercises in artificial scarcity do not end well for the majority. And why reinvent this particular wheel in the first place? It’s dangerous nonsense, and I hope that not too many grandmothers get swindled out of their retirement money by misinformed (even if well meaning) advisors.

  6. With his entry, Ed Carpenter will have his own car and to spit time with Conor.

  7. No pic of the crypto livery car either

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