Andretti Autosport driver Zach Veach displays a youthful and boyish appearance, but don’t be deceived by that.
Off the track, away from his No. 26 Gainbridge Honda for Andretti Autosport, Veach is a rock climber. He has scaled some of the most challenging geological formations in the United States. Along with his best friend, INDYCAR rookie Dalton Kellett, the two climbers annually travel to Kentucky to climb at the Red River Gorge.
Veach’s goal at the end of this season is to scale the famed, “El Capitan” in Yosemite Valley.
“I’ve climbed Half Dome and that’s 2,000 feet (from base to summit),” Veach explained. “El Cap is 3,000 feet (base to summit). It’s much harder.
“When I do El Cap, I’ll probably spend two or three nights sleeping on the wall to get to the top. That’s my goal after this season. We’re going to show up with a big wall rack and port-a-ledge and try to get to the top. That’s the dream. That’s the goal.
“My life outside motorsports, I love rock climbing.”
Many professional climbers live out of a van so they can travel from one geological formation to the next. Veach got some encouragement from his girlfriend to follow his dream and that meant purchasing a van.
“I’ve talked about this since I was 18, and I finally had the amount of disposable income to pursue this,” Veach said. “I just turned 25, so a lot of it was on my girlfriend, too.
“She’s like, ‘Look, man, we don’t have kids. You’re young. Maybe we should do it if we’re going to do it.’ It was nice to have a project to get my mind off everything. It’s about five months of work so far, and hopefully will be done just before St. Pete. It will be fun.
“I’ll bring it to the campgrounds at Mid-Ohio, at Road America. I want that fan experience, because they always seem like they’re having such a fun time.”
The 25-year-old Veach has been driving race cars for half of his life. It didn’t take long for him to climb the ranks from go-karts to Formula BMW to the 2010 Formula Atlantic championship. He quickly moved up to USF2000, Star Mazda and ultimately Indy Lights.
His focus was always the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, and he achieved that goal in 2017 when Veach made his debut in the 2017 Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama.
At the end of that season, Andretti Autosport signed him to a three-year deal to become the fourth driver on the multi-car team.
This is the final year of his contract and Veach is ready to prove that the boyish, youthful driver is ready to become a savvy veteran.
On the track, that is his mountain to scale in 2020.
“I feel like I’ve always been better when next year is not guaranteed,” Veach said. “Then you’re driving for everything for each weekend. When you have a bit of that fallback, that’s a bit of comfort that I don’t like to have, really.
“We’ll just treat it as anything else. Every Indy Lights year that we went into, nothing was guaranteed the next year, so it’s that same mindset. I just have to do the best I can with what I have and make every opportunity count, and at the end of the year, hopefully all those add up to a reason to be here the next.”
The 17-race NTT INDYCAR SERIES season begins March 13-15 with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on the city streets of St. Petersburg, Fla.