Bobby Rahal – Syndication Server

Rahal eager to promote Vips for 2025 in place of Lundgaard

Bobby Rahal and his fellow co-owners of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing have a genuine affinity for Christian Lundgaard. They didn’t want to search for a new driver to occupy their No. 45 Honda, but that’s where they find themselves after he chose to …

Rahal understands the 22-year-old has done what he considers to be the best thing at this stage of his career, but that doesn’t lessen the sting or diminish the feelings of rejection associated with Lundgaard’s impending move to partner with Pato O’Ward and Nolan Siegel in 2025.

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“I’m proud of what our team has achieved over the last several years, and certainly Christian has been a part of that,” Rahal told RACER. “But when I hear people talking about McLaren being one of the top four teams, where’s the results to show that? Yes, Pato, he’s clearly the leader of that team, and I would say he will be continuing to be the leader of the team. A lot of drivers always feel like the the grass is greener somewhere else. You look at (Andretti Global’s) Marcus Ericsson. If you ask Marcus today, I bet he’d rather be back with Ganassi, right? I think he’s a hell of a driver, but the first half of the year hasn’t been so wonderful for him there.

“So what I said to the team today was I guess Christian doesn’t think we can take him to victory lane as much as McLaren. And if you base it on past history, well, that’s not necessarily a good decision. But OK, I see it, maybe we haven’t made the gains that we would like to, but we’re busting our ass to make those gains. And a career isn’t made in one year. Careers are made over multiple years.

“We loved Christian. We still love Christian. He’s a firecracker. He’s a guy that lights things up, and I’m just sad that he’s decided to go elsewhere. But I’ve been in this sport a long time, and this is not the first time it’s happened, and it’s not the last.”

Lundgaard, who sits 11th in the driver’s championship, will replace Alexander Rossi in the No. 7 Chevy, who holds seventh in the standings right behind O’Ward in sixth. After giving the ex-Formula 2 driver his break in IndyCar in the summer of 2021, Rahal wanted Lundgaard to stay and continue to lead the RLL team to better days.

“Loyalty is a big thing for me, and I know it’s a big thing for Mike Lanigan,” he added. “I remember in ’81 when I sent letters to Roger Penske and Pat Patrick about letting me drive their Indy cars on the road circuits, and I got responses from them that basically said, ‘Don’t call us. We’ll call you.’ And in ’84, Pat Patrick offered me a ride, and I turned it down because of Jim Trueman, who’d put his faith behind me and got me to IndyCar.

“At the end of ’84, Roger Penske cornered me at Las Vegas and offered me a ride. And I thought about it, and I said, ‘You know, Jim Trueman’s the one that brought me to the dance. I’m going to stick with Jim Trueman.’ And so loyalty, to me, is more important than anything, because there’s ups and downs in everything, right? And you really want to feel like you have a home when there’s peaks and there’s valleys. That’s the thing that disappoints me the most with Christian’s decision. He obviously didn’t feel that way. And that’s maybe that’s our failing,”

So where might RLL begin its search for Lundgaard’s replacement?

“You know, I feel a great deal of loyalty to Juri Vips (pictured, top) who, arguably, is one of the best Formula 2 guys out there, since many of them are coming over here,” he said of the Estonian who impressed in two RLL outings last year and remains on the payroll as a test and reserve driver.

“He’s been a great, great partner to us. He’s a team guy. I really have a lot of strong sentiment towards Juri. He doesn’t complain; you ask him to do something, he does it, and he does it very well. While I’m sorry to see Christian go, when one door shuts, another door opens and so I’m excited about our future at RLL. We’re going to be OK. We wish Christian well, and you know what? We’re going to go find someone of equal caliber to follow in his footsteps.”

With a number of sponsorship contracts to complete across RLL’s three cars, Rahal doesn’t expect to have the new driver of the No. 45 Hy-Vee Honda locked in until August, and he also spoke to suggestions the Midwest grocery store chain is leaving along with Lundgaard.

“We’re still concluding some arrangements with sponsors and what have you, so this is pretty early; but we’re in the midst of working with a number of companies, either new ones or existing ones, to renew or to extend, so we’re not going to really know what the driver situation is till the end of July, and probably more likely the end of August,” he said.

“Hy-Vee has been our sponsor since ’20 when Graham (Rahal) was running a Hy-Vee car in Iowa and finished third, which is really what ignited the interest that Hy-Vee had in joining us in a bigger way. We’ve had different drivers represent them over the years and our relationship with Hy-Vee is very strong. I’m confident that we will be with Hy-Vee in the years to come.”

Rahal hopeful of keeping Lundgaard in the fold for 2025

Bobby Rahal knows he has one of the most coveted IndyCar free agents left on the market with Christian Lundgaard. With Lundgaard’s contract set to expire at the end of the season, and with his manager having tested the waters at other teams with opportunities to pursue, Rahal wants to keep the impressively fast and consistent product of Denmark in the No. 45 Honda for 2025, and maybe longer, if they can come to terms.

As more seats get filled or are taken off the list of options at rival teams, the narrowing options in the paddock could play to RLL’s favor, but there are no guarantees their top performer — who finished eighth in last year’s championship and leads the team this year in 11th — will be back.

“I’m not sure where else, aside from maybe Penske, that would be better,” Rahal told RACER. “We’ve been as fast as all those other guys at a lot of races. So I don’t know why he’d look elsewhere, but you always are going to just see what the market will bear. But our intent is to re-sign him. And as I’ve said before, I don’t think he’s looking to go anywhere, necessarily.

“But we’ve got to continue to give him good race cars and do a good job for him. We’ll see what happens. And sooner rather than later we’ll know what the scenario looks like. But it’s certainly our intent to keep to keep him.”

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As Rahal told RACER while discussing the future of Juri Vips — another driver in the RLL stable — the team needs to reach a decision with Lundgaard and also figure out how many cars and drivers it will field in 2025.

Along with Lundgaard, RLL veteran Graham Rahal in the No. 15 Honda (15th in the drivers’ standings) and newcomer Pietro Fittipaldi in the No. 30 Honda (20th) are in the mix with its three-car program, and in looking to next season, Rahal said, “Right now, it’s all about finding the financial backing to do whatever we want to do, whether it’s two cars, three cars, four cars, or whatever.”

Along with expanding, a departure by one of the three would make it easier to solve the four-driver puzzle.

“It’s just a matter of we’re putting our head down making sure that we have the financial resource to do a good job for our drivers next year,” Rahal said. “I really can’t tell you exactly what it will look like yet; obviously we like Pietro and we hope he stays. But yes, there’s too many butts, too few seats at this stage. We could run a fourth car. That’s dependent on what Honda or Chevrolet, whoever we’re with next year, might say.

“We really are just looking at putting together all of our sponsorship packages, and we’ve already had a couple of re-ups, so that’s good. It’s also that time of the year where, I hate to say it, anything could happen. It’s just a matter of getting through the next races. Then we have a break after Toronto and we’ll get a better idea on where things could stand.”

With the uncertainty surrounding Honda’s future in IndyCar beyond its current contract that runs through 2026, Rahal, who introduced the Japanese brand to the series under the Rahal-Hogan Racing banner in 1994, wants to stick with the company and do a contract extension of its own if possible.

“We’re fulfilling our agreement, our commitment for this year, and we’re happy to do so,” he added. “All I know is we have had a long relationship with Honda, but the engine count is a big deal these days, and understandably so. We certainly would like to stay with Honda, but never seem to be the automatic choice. We may be put in a position where we have to look elsewhere. I hope not. But we’ll find out.”

RRDC Legends: Bobby Rahal on his 1986 Indy 500 win

While SAFEisFAST.com – the online resource for young racers produced by the Road Racing Drivers Club – regularly offers advice from current drivers, it also wants to provide the input of some of the RRDC’s long-standing members. That’s the aim of …

While SAFEisFAST.com — the online resource for young racers produced by the Road Racing Drivers Club — regularly offers advice from current drivers, it also wants to provide the input of some of the RRDC’s long-standing members. That’s the aim of the new “RRDC Legends” video series, where RRDC members will share stories from their careers and offer their guidance for today’s young drivers. First up, Bobby Rahal recalls his 1986 Indianapolis 500 victory, his relationship with Jim Trueman and how he overcame the urge to quit racing despite the ups and downs of his career.

GTP then vs now: Bobby Rahal and Wayne Taylor on past and present

GTP – it’s a name that is designed to reflect the past while looking to the future. The past was a time when the likes of Porsche, Jaguar, Nissan and Toyota dueled it out on America’s great racetracks and a few city streets. But there were also …

GTP — it’s a name that is designed to reflect the past while looking to the future. The past was a time when the likes of Porsche, Jaguar, Nissan and Toyota dueled it out on America’s great racetracks and a few city streets. But there were also chassis from Spice or Intrepid mated to Chevrolet and Cosworth engines.

Where today we have drivers the likes of Filipe Albuquerque, Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun, Sebastien Bourdais, Connor de Phillippi, Pipo Derani, Mathieu Jaminet, Felipe Nasr, Ricky Taylor, Renger van der Zande, back then it was Derek Bell, Geoff Brabham, Juan Manuel Fangio II, Al Holbert, Chip Robinson … and let’s not forget Bobby Rahal and Wayne Taylor.

Yes, two of IMSA’s current GTP team owners were there for the original GTP, which had its last race in October of 1993 at Portland International Raceway. The original GTP had lasted for 12 years. Thirty years after its demise in favor of the World Sports Car formula, GTP was reborn in IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship comprised of LMDh cars and, should they choose to join, FIA Hypercars. How do they compare, and is the current battle of Acura vs. BMW vs. Cadillac vs. Porsche worthy of the GTP name?

“They’re, relatively speaking, the most sophisticated [sports racing cars] just as the old GTP cars were,” says Rahal. “The cars were much simpler than they are today, but just the fact that they were very exciting cars to watch, and exciting cars to drive. Fast, obviously. Great names like Porsche, Jaguar, March — it wasn’t obviously a production car manufacturer, but still produced great race cars. It was just an exciting time, back in the ’80s, with GTP. And here we are, 30, 40 years later, and resurrected the class again. The fans certainly love them, because they’re very dynamic cars to watch. Aside from that, they look right, they’re fast, they tick all the boxes — very similar to what the the original GTP cars did.”

Having witnessed both eras of GTP, Bobby Rahal appreciates the finer points of each. Motorsport Images

Rahal may have cemented his reputation as one of America’s great racing drivers in Indy cars, where he won three CART championships and the 1986 Indianapolis 500. But after his fledgling open-wheel career, and before and during his IndyCar years, he raced sports cars to great effect, including stints in Can-Am, GT and culminating in GTP. Since 2008 he has been BMW’s partner in IMSA, with the Z4, M6 and M8 GT3 and GTLM cars, and now the M Hybrid V8 GTP cars. The Nos. 24 and 25 are campaigned full time by Philip Eng/Augusto Farfus and Connor de Phillippi/Nick Yelloly.

Wayne Taylor, on the other hand, has made his fame in sports car racing, first as a driver and now team principal of Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport, which fields the No. 10 Acura ARX-06 for son Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque. Most of his success as a driver, including a pair of championships, came during the World Sports Car era. However he had many years in GTP cars, most notably the Intrepid RM-1 Chevrolet, in which he scored the only victory for the car in New Orleans. If there’s one glaring omission for Taylor from the original GTP era to today, it’s the fact that a car like the Intrepid couldn’t exist in the modern world of factory-supported prototype racing.

“But then again, you couldn’t make this happen then, right?” he says of the current LMDh cars. “Now with the amount of technology and aerodynamics, these cars are clearly better cars than those cars were. But if you think that was, what, 1991 — some 30 years ago — to do the speeds that we did in those cars, compared to today is pretty amazing.”

Wayne Taylor and the Intrepid RM-1 Chevrolet on the streets of New Orleans in 1991. William Murenbeeld/Motorsport Images

The original GTP was mostly privateers until Nissan with Electramotive and Toyota with Dan Gurney’s All American Racers began dominating with factory efforts — the thing that effectively killed the class, along with GTP-similar Group C fading in the FIA World Sports Car Championship. Today all but JDC-Miller Motorsports and, soon, Proton Competition, are factory-backed teams.

“There really weren’t factories involved in the ’80s, until probably the Electramotive showed up, and that was clearly funded by Nissan,” notes Rahal. “And, of course, then Toyota came in with Gurney, same thing. Those were factory efforts similar to what we’re doing with BMW and Wayne and Mike [Shank] are doing with Acura, and now we’re factory efforts. And, you know, that kind of killed IMSA originally, because there was maybe only one or two factories involved, but now you’ve got five or six.

“I know, they’re supposed to be able to be run by privateers and what have you, but knowing what I know about these cars… it’s a very different level of expectation now, because of the complexity and the fact that the factories are actually designing and building these cars. We have BoP now, which we never had back in those days. And I’d love to see a series without BoP but I guess that’s just not going to happen anytime soon. So that just comes down to hoping that the regulators are able to rule fairly and ensure that there is competition within the category. But for the first year, I think GTP has been unqualified success.”

Wayne Taylor has seen both sides of GTP as a driver and now as car owner for son Ricky and Filipe Albuquerque. Michael Levitt/Motorsport Images

Both men tasted success in the original GTP era, although neither claimed a championship during the period. While most of Taylor’s success as a driver came in the World Sports Car era that followed, he looks back on the GTP days, and especially the Intrepid, as a great — if dangerous — time.

“The intrepid was a very special racing car,” Taylor remembers. “It had over 750 horsepower normally aspirated. It had 4000 pounds of downforce on the nose at 150mph. At Lime Rock through Big Bend, you could literally go flat through there. Because of the G forces, I remember that we had to strap our legs up, me and Tommy Kendall, because we physically couldn’t hold our legs up because of the speed.

“But in those days, we had no telemetry, we had no track overlays, we had no electronics. Although when we were doing it at the time, we thought, ‘Wow, this is like really modern stuff,’ you know. But now, when I look back, compared to what my sons are driving today, it’s so, so different. And so much more input comes from the driver — the driver has many more tools inside the cars to make them faster and make them do different things for them. Whereas in our day, you know, we had a steering wheel (and) a gear lever. We had no paddle shifters, we had no HANS devices, we had no no-lift shifts. And the engineers and the mechanics had to believe what we told them. Today you can’t just tell them you’re flat through that corner … they look on the computer and they can see, ‘Well, no, he’s talking BS.’”

Rahal’s best GTP moments came in what is arguably his best season as a race driver, 1987. A victory at in the Twelve Hours of Sebring, plus wins in his hometown and at his home track, coupled with his second of three Indy Car Series titles, made it a most memorable year.

“Winning Sebring in ’87 with Jochen Mass in the 962 Porsche, which was a fantastic race car,” he recalls. “In ’87 I did five IMSA races and I won three of them and I was second in the other two. So winning in Columbus, winning at Mid Ohio … that was a special year, special season, special summer, because in ’87, I also won my second IndyCar championship. So we won a lot of races that year, and three of them in the 962. That was just a wonderful car to drive and Bayside Disposal was a great team, good people.”

Bobby Rahal’s first IMSA GTP era exploits included a memorable stint in the Bayside Disposal Racing Porsche 962 in 1987. William Murenbeeld/Motorsport Images

The original GTP era, as Taylor notes, is one to remember: “It was certainly an era that people won’t forget, because there were some beautiful cars. Racing against Geoff Brabham and Chip Robinson I remember was fantastic. We had a lot of great fun together racing against the Toyotas, Dan Gurney’s All American Eagles. It was really good racing.”

The first four races of the 2023 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship — with four different winners across three marques — suggest that this era of GTP, as different as it is from the first, may be remembered just as fondly.

Rahal triggers ‘Indy Recovery Plan’

Scraping into the Indianapolis 500 with three of its four entries and seeing his son Graham Rahal bumped from the field by teammate Jack Harvey wasn’t a scenario Bobby Rahal could imagine prior to May 21. Fresh off pole position for the Indianapolis …

Fresh off pole position for the Indianapolis Grand Prix and a strong run for all of his Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing cars on May 13, the shock of seeing Graham fail to qualify was an unexpected lowlight to cap the highlights delivered the previous weekend. Slow at the Indy Open Test in April, the team returned to the big 2.5-mile oval for practice and qualifying after the Indy GP and showed minimal gains.

With Sunday’s Indy 500 offering no kindnesses to RLL as one-off driver Katherine Legge crashed into the pit wall and became the first driver out of the race while full-timers Jack Harvey (18th) and Christian Lundgaard (19th) moved forward from the back of the field but made no impact on the event, Rahal left the track with a firm view of what took place and what needs to change when they return next May for IndyCar’s biggest show.

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“Very disappointed in the performance of our team,” the 1986 Indy 500 winner told RACER. “There’s certainly a lot of introspection; we’ve been there before, not that I don’t take any pride in it, but we’ve been there before. The response will be that we’ll come back and win this race next year. We’re just gonna have to commit ourselves to not just doing things right, but doing the right things. And clearly, probably from a mechanical drag standpoint, we’re not. We’re not where we needed to be.

“Despite the fact that we spent time in the wind tunnel, we obviously missed certain things or just didn’t totally understand what we needed to do. And that’s got experienced people behind it, so you wonder about that. But clearly, it’s cause for introspection, and it’s a cause for determination. We’re not gonna do this again. We’re gonna take our place back where we should be, right up front. Only thing I can say is thank God we don’t have any more high-speed ovals left on the on the schedule. I really felt bad for our drivers because we let them down and obviously let down our sponsors. Thankfully, they’ve all been very supportive, but still, we all expect better.”

Rahal remains committed to getting Jack Harvey up to speed as well as fixing the team’s systemic issues at the Indy 500. Gavin Baker/Motorsport Images

Three years ago, RLL won the Indy 500 with former driver Takuma Sato. Two Indy 500s ago, its newest winner, Team Penske, had two cars — Will Power’s and the affiliate entry for Paretta Autosport’s Simona De Silvestro –fighting like RLL to make it through the Last Chance Qualifying session. Turnarounds are possible, and despite the busy schedule that sees the NTT IndyCar Series go straight from the 500 to race this weekend at the downtown Detroit Grand Prix street festival, Rahal isn’t giving his team a long runway to find fixes to its Indy ills.

“I want the technical staff, as well as the management, [COO] Steve Erickson, [VP of Operations] Ricardo [Nault], to dig in now,” he said. “I asked them for what I call the ‘Indy Recovery Plan.’ And that was asked for right after qualifying. We have several weeks left, and at the end of [June], that plan will be defined. Then we will begin the process of improving our performance. We’re not waiting until the fall or winter. That starts now, because I think there’s a fair amount of work to do, things to look into.

“In the end, we are a proud team. We pride ourselves on our performances and the fact that we’ve won races and won Indy 500s and everything else. And that’s just totally not acceptable with what happened, so we’re starting to do something about that. Now. We’re not going to wait. This year, it was the result of not doing the right things over the last several years, and we paid the price for it.”

Having placed all three drivers in the top eight at the Indy GP, RLL should see an upswing in results as the series heads into a string of road and street courses. And while RLL’s owners are demanding swift changes to its competitiveness on superspeedway, Rahal says that isn’t the case with embattled Jack Harvey, who’s been the subject of intensifying rumors regarding the team’s desire to try a different driver in the No. 30 Honda before season’s end.

“Jack’s our driver,” Rahal said of the Briton who’s in the final year of a two-year deal. “We have time to determine how we want to go forward, and there’s no reason to rush. It’s all about focusing on the upcoming races and doing the best job we can. The chips will fall later and we’ll see where they end up. At this stage, Jack’s in for the season as far as I can see — Jack’s our driver. We are committed to him and I think he’s committed to us.”