Rinus VeeKay entered the Milwaukee Mile with two goals for the final two race weekends of the season.

Step one was to earn a trophy, whether a podium finish or race win for Juncos Hollinger Racing. Step two was to finish in the top 10 of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES championship.

He accomplished the first goal Sunday.

VeeKay (photo, top) finished third in the Snap-on Makers and Fixers 250, giving Juncos Hollinger Racing its second podium in team history. The first also came in 2024 at Milwaukee Mile, when Conor Daly also finished third.

“It’s great because I think we deserved it a long time ago,” team co-owner Ricardo Juncos said. “INDYCAR is hard. Everything has to be perfect. Everything has to be right. I think we’re showing what we are capable of doing. I think the growth of the team is there.”

VeeKay enters Sunday’s Mission Foods Grand Prix of Monterey (2:30 p.m. ET, FOX, FOX Deportes, FOX One, INDYCAR Radio powered by OnlyBulls) in 10th place in the championship.

He leads two-time series champion Will Power by 13 points and six-time series champion Scott Dixon by 46.

“It was really cool to get a podium to finish off a season like this one with some deserved hardware,” VeeKay said. “We are mixing it up with the names we want to mix it up with.”

Before VeeKay’s arrival, the best championship finish for a Juncos Hollinger Racing driver was in 2023 when Callum Ilott placed 16th.

VeeKay has given the team its best Indianapolis 500 finish, a sixth-place result in the 110th Running on May 24, one of eight top-10 finishes this season. Juncos Hollinger Racing had five combined top-10 finishes between two full-time cars last season. He also has four top-five finishes, equaling the amount the team had in its first 104 starts before VeeKay’s arrival.

The Dutchman also has produced three Firestone Fast Six qualifying appearances this season. The team had three in its history prior to this season.

This is something VeeKay has become accustomed to – elevating teams.

He joined Dale Coyne Racing last season and took a car that finished 27th in entrant points in 2024 to 14th, recording seven top-10 finishes.

The two-car team’s best finish in 17 points-paying races the year before VeeKay joined was 13th.

“Really embracing it,” VeeKay said of the last two years. “It feels very natural to me. Both times I’ve been blindly trusted by the teams that my feedback was correct.”

His feedback came from experience and being a student of all facets of the sport.

VeeKay starred as a rookie in 2020, beating now five-time series champion Alex Palou for Rookie of the Year honors after recording three top-five finishes and five top 10s in 14 starts with ECR. He finished 14th in the championship that season.

Rinus VeeKay

VeeKay (photo, above) finished 12th in 2021 and 2022, then 14th in 2023 and 2024. Each with the same ECR team, a crucial step in his development.

“I had speed right away, but knowing exactly when to show that speed or when to save fuel, really knowing the strategy while inside the car, I think has helped me a lot,” VeeKay said.

“I struggled as a rookie to find the difference between pushing too hard and too little. So, in practice I would be quick right away, but I would find myself in the wall pretty quick. Then the second year for me in INDYCAR, I would take it too slow because I didn’t want to get any damage and wanted to keep my car clean.

“I think I’ve found my happy medium of getting up to speed quickly in practices, in race weekends, but then also in the race tying things together, really knowing what’s happening on strategy to make an undercut or an overcut work but also get to a fuel number.”

Juncos first saw that potential when VeeKay drove for him in USF Pro 2000 in 2018 and then moved with the team to INDY NXT in 2019.

VeeKay won the 2018 USF Pro 2000 championship with Juncos before narrowly missing the INDY NXT title the following season by 21 points to Oliver Askew.

The relationship has come full circle this season in VeeKay’s return.

VeeKay aims to deliver Juncos Hollinger Racing its best championship finish while the team is showing it can compete more consistently with INDYCAR’s established organizations.

That progress represents something bigger to Juncos than a podium or a points position.

“I think it’s a good sample of you can make it happen in life, no matter what it is,” Juncos said. “People said to me when we started in INDYCAR in 2017 that I was crazy, losing my mind, and how difficult it was going to be. It was very challenging to get there, and then when you get to INDYCAR, to stay there and then to be competitive, it’s just always something else that seems like a huge challenge.

“But we’re showing that if you sacrifice, work hard, have consistency and never give up, things can happen.”