Rossi lands seat with Ed Carpenter Racing as team owner Carpenter scales back to Indy 500 only

Alexander Rossi on Wednesday was announced as the newest driver at Ed Carpenter Racing, which will be the third team in four years for the former Indianapolis 500 winner.

Rossi, who won the 100th running of the Indy 500 as a rookie in 2016, will join Christian Rasmussen in the two-car lineup. Carpenter, who had already scaled back to racing just ovals, will only run the Indy 500 next year in a third ECR entry.

Rasmussen this past season as a rookie was slotted to share the car with Carpenter, but the team owner ultimately backed out of the final three races of the year. Rasmussen finished the year in the car and kept it in the Leaders Circle program, which gives the top 22 teams in the standings a monetary bonus that ECR desperately needed.

For his efforts, Rasmussen was given a contract extension and a full-time seat alongside Rossi, who has been looking for a new job since June when Arrow McLaren said it was not resigning him after two seasons. The ECR driver deals were described as multi-year and announced Wednesday, which was also Rossi's 33rd birthday.