Team IndyCar Takes on “The Amazing Race” – Week Three

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor

The 30th season of the CBS reality show “The Amazing Race” is underway and this season’s cast includes two IndyCar drivers, 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner Alexander Rossi and Conor Daly, among the 11 teams competing for the $1 million prize.

As the duo races around the world, we’ll track how they’re doing in the race and see if they can capture the checkered flag when all is said and done.

***SPOLIERS AHEAD***

After their fifth-place finish last week, Rossi and Daly remained alive and well in the race, setting off from Belgium to Tangiers, Morocco with the nine teams still left in the race for leg No. 3.

Once they arrived in Africa, the teams were tasked with taking a taxi to a fish market and then packing bins full of fish, arranged neatly, to be able to get their next clue. For the second week in a row, the first task of the leg was the Achilles’ heel for Team IndyCar. After arriving in fifth, they would leave in last place as they headed on to the Road Block.

This week’s Road Block was titled “Rock the Kasbah” and Daly was the team’s representative for the event.

To be able to obtain their next clue, he would have to take the Travelocity roaming gnome to a rooftop, send it across to another rooftop on a zip line and then find his way over to it. After finding it, the second part of the task would be to find the Kasbah museum, go to the roof and send the gnome on another zip line. Once found a second time, teams would have to use the tokens attached to the gnome to make a call to a certain number in order to get a phrase that they would have to give to the shop clerk in order to get the clue.

Daly was able to power through the Road Block, making up a ton of time and returning to Rossi back at the start in third place.

Next up was the Detour, in which teams were given the choice of either taking groceries to different vendors around the city (Drop it off) or look for words written on belly dancers to get the location of the pit stop (Shake it off).

Rossi and Daly chose the latter of the two options, which most teams did, and quickly found the location of the pit stop (Moulay Hafid Palace) before setting off in a race to the finish line. Team Yale had just enough of a lead on them, beating them to the finish by only a matter of seconds.

Despite coming in as the runner-up team, this leg provided Team IndyCar with their best finish of the race thus far and puts them in a great position going forward.

“I’m proud of Conor, man,” Rossi said en route to the finish. “The road block seemed pretty brutal. We were coming in last, so he made up a lot of time for us.”

The third leg of the race also was the first non-elimination leg, meaning that all nine teams survived and will move on next week.

Team Standings (Week 3)

1. Team Yale
2. Team IndyCar
3. Team Extreme
4. Team WellStrung
5. Team Big Brother
6. Team Chomp
7. The Firefighters
8. Team Ocean Rescue
9. Team Slam Dunk

ELIMINATED: The Ring Girls (Week 1), Team Goat Yoga (Week 2)