Bobby Rahal, co-owner of RLL, revealed the team has retained the former Red Bull reserve driver as part of a plan to eventually expand to a fourth entry.
“We exercised our option with Juri,” Rahal said. “We see Juri as a long-term play as well.
“We'd like to run a fourth car. We're not making as much progress on that as we would like. That's certainly a hope. Maybe it's only a selected number of races, maybe one, maybe it's none. We're not quite sure.
“There's one thing we did know, is we wanted to keep Juri in our family. He did a great job for us in Portland and fab job in Laguna. It's a shame chaos caught him at the start. All in all, very impressed with Juri. We certainly wanted to keep him within our organisation.”
The 23-year-old Estonian contested the last two rounds of the 2023 IndyCar season with RLL. He started and finished 18th in his debut at Portland International Raceway but made the biggest impression at Laguna Seca.
It was there that he climbed to fourth overall in a Thursday test ahead of the weekend and backed it up by leading opening practice the following day and qualifying a respectable 13th.
During the race, Vips was the victim of an opening-lap incident that required extensive repairs. He returned 24 laps down and finished 24th.
“Juri is a good young man,” Rahal said. “I have to say he did everything we asked him to do. I think he showed that he certainly is capable of running up front in an IndyCar race.
“As I say, he's a good young man. I've gotten to know Juri since he's been with us. That's why we wanted to make sure we kept him because we do want to run a fourth car, if at all possible. He certainly showed he belongs.”
Source: Autosport