Jack Harvey has been penalized for his primary role in the large crash that blocked the track on the opening lap of last weekend’s Honda Indy Toronto race. The NTT IndyCar Series announcement was made prior to qualifying for the Hy-Vee IndyCar …
Jack Harvey has been penalized for his primary role in the large crash that blocked the track on the opening lap of last weekend’s Honda Indy Toronto race.
The NTT IndyCar Series announcement was made prior to qualifying for the Hy-Vee IndyCar Weekend at Iowa Speedway, and once the order is set for Saturday’s race, Harvey and his No. 30 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Honda will move rearward by nine positions.
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IndyCar cited Rule 9.3.3., Avoidable Contact, as the offense committed by Harvey, which states: “The primary responsibility for avoiding contact with a Competitor resides with the overtaking Competitor and the secondary responsibility resides with the Competitor(s) being overtaken. A Competitor who fails to demonstrate their responsibility and initiates a maneuver that results in contact with another Competitor may be penalized.”
Bobby Rahal didn’t want to hear it. Nearly two months of intensive work to find his IndyCar teams’ competitive shortcomings were starting to bear fruit, and behind the scenes, the 70-year-old was lighting a fire under Rahal Letterman Lanigan …
Bobby Rahal didn’t want to hear it.
Nearly two months of intensive work to find his IndyCar teams’ competitive shortcomings were starting to bear fruit, and behind the scenes, the 70-year-old was lighting a fire under Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s managers and chiefs and engineers and mechanics to get creative in solving its speed deficiencies.
Privately, the three-time IndyCar champion and 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner was said to be putting in an extreme number of hours to help the organization turn itself around, and not with a soft target for “as soon as possible.” He wanted it now. But in typical Rahal fashion, he didn’t want to take any credit for the newfound strength the team he co-owns with Mike Lanigan and David Letterman has demonstrated since weathering a brutal month of May.
“You need to talk to Mike Lanigan, for starters, because he’s pushed as hard as anybody to get us to where we are,” Rahal told RACER. “Give him the credit. Go talk to (new COO) Steve Eriksen, who’s been huge for us since he came onboard. Steve’s brought a lot of things managerially and perspective-wise that we needed, and we’re better off for having him. Go talk to (veteran RLL team manager) Rico (Nault), who’s been with me for longer than I can remember, because he’s been getting his hands full this entire time trying to get us moving in the right direction. There’s a lot of others, also, because they’re the ones to talk to instead of me.”
Bobby Rahal, Steve Eriksen, Ricardo Nault and David Salters of HPD — the brain trust that’s helped Rahal Letterman Lanigan go from zero to hero in the span of mere weeks. Michael Levitt/Lumen
Fresh off the team’s first win since August of 2020, RLL’s in-season efforts were rewarded by first-time IndyCar winner Christian Lundgaard, a native of Denmark whose pursuit of Formula 1 stalled and subsequent rerouting to America with RLL proved transformational for the team and the 21-year-old.
Rahal’s son Graham, who was in tears after failing to qualify for the Indy 500 in May, nearly earned pole for the July 2 race at Mid-Ohio, and put on an epic performance on Sunday in Toronto that started in 27th-place and finished in ninth.
And as his father suggested, speaking with Ricardo Nault revealed the rest of how RLL overhauled itself through fixes in engineering and internal culture.
“We felt we had the basis of a good car, but we just got lost for a while — a year and a half, really,” said Nault, the former IndyCar mechanic who ascended upwards to a leadership role many years ago. “And it just got worse. Then had a little bit of restructuring and started by trying to get some buy-in from everybody to help contribute to the process. We had a bunch of people come up with ideas on what to do and we just started pushing together a little bit more than we have in the past.”
Going through RLL’s darkest days helped the group to rediscover its fighting spirit and improve its chemistry as the men and women who comprise the entries for the Rahal’s No. 15 car, the No. 30 for Jack Harvey, and Lundgaard’s No. 45 banded together in the same quest for success.
“We were all down, and everybody had to come together to help each other,” Nault continued. “And Graham, Christian and Jack, they all work really well together to try to make the cars better; nobody holds back. Nobody’s got any secrets. If one guy learns something, he brings it to everyone and it goes around in circles so that way, it helps to elevate the whole organization.”
With Graham’s strong form at Mid-Ohio and now Lundgaard’s practically dominating performance in Toronto, RLL’s spirits are…undampened, and for good reason. Perry Nelson/Lumen
Another area under development for RLL has been with its damper program. Gains made through exhaustive efforts at Indy helped the beleaguered team to acquire more pace through its damper builds, and whether it was Rahal qualifying second on the rolling Mid-Ohio road course or Lundgaard earning pole and dominating on the wickedly bumpy Toronto street circuit, the team has erased a sizable shortcoming in a short amount of time.
“The whole team has been working our damper program for some time and we are really starting to see it pay off,” Nault said before applauding the work done by former Andretti damper specialist Mike Cicciarelli who joined RLL during the offseason.
“Mike brought a lot of new understandings and new ways to look at our damper program, which helps. He’s been a big help, and with a few tweaks, we’re going from nowhere to sitting on poles and winning races.”
Nault closed by sharing his appreciation for the mercurial Dane who, thankfully, will finally shave the awful mustache he committed to wearing until he clinched his first win. Like his driver, Lundgaard’s race engineer Ben Siegel also delivered on the immense talent and promise he’s shown since joining the team in 2022.
“Obviously, Christian is a great talent, and so is Ben — a first-time race engineer with Christian last year who is really coming into strides now,” he said. “Ben does a great job of understanding what it takes and working well with Christian to give him a car that he really likes. And to be fair, I don’t think we had the fastest car out there all weekend, but the whole team played the strategy right in qualifying, and then in the race as well. Everything just fell our way, and you need that sometimes. But this result comes from all the preparation that everyone did along the way.”
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 …
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 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.”
A crazy Pole Day for the Indy 500 is over and RACER’s Marshall Pruett is joined by Conor Daly and Jack Harvey who share their thoughts on all that took place.
A crazy Pole Day for the Indy 500 is over and RACER’s Marshall Pruett is joined by Conor Daly and Jack Harvey who share their thoughts on all that took place.
Allen McDonald has worked with some of IndyCar’s best drivers, and with his shift from Graham Rahal’s car to Jack Harvey’s machine this season, the veteran race engineer has seen the pilot of the No. 30 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda double …
Allen McDonald has worked with some of IndyCar’s best drivers, and with his shift from Graham Rahal’s car to Jack Harvey’s machine this season, the veteran race engineer has seen the pilot of the No. 30 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda double down when it mattered most.
On the cusp of being sent home at the end of Sunday, Harvey dug deep and willed his way into the field of 33 with the final run of the day to bump his way into the 107th Indianapolis 500.
“It’s unbelievable,” McDonald told RACER. “We’ve been really struggling for balance and speed, and he’s just been flat stuck with it. And you know, we put him in some difficult setups and things like that to try and find speed and he’s just gone with it, hasn’t fazed him one bit.”
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Harvey’s leap from 34th and out of the field to 33rd and in came at the expense of teammate Graham Rahal, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to those who know Harvey’s history.
“He’s been so determined, and so positive,” McDonald added. “And as a team, we’ve obviously made a pretty tough month of May for ourselves and he’s just been the spirit behind us. He’s really pushed us and it’s been amazing.”
Graham Rahal undid his safety belts, disconnected the various tubes and cables attached to his racing suit and helmet, and stepped from his car into a new and unwelcome reality. For the second time in his family’s history, Rahal’s participation in …
Graham Rahal undid his safety belts, disconnected the various tubes and cables attached to his racing suit and helmet, and stepped from his car into a new and unwelcome reality.
For the second time in his family’s history, Rahal’s participation in the Indianapolis 500 came to an end before Carb Day, before “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing,” and before he was ready to accept membership to a club he never wanted to join.
Heartbroken, he took time to thank his entire team because that’s what leaders do. And then it was time to deal with the upswell of emotions.
Walking around to the right side of his No. 15 Honda, his tousled hair slightly astray, Rahal put his head in his hands and cried, releasing weeks of worry and disappointment in a few private moments before cameras descended upon him. Rahal’s wife Courtney arrived and brought love and consolation to her husband. With his daughter in sight, he lifted her to his chest and held her tight as more tears flowed.
Marshall Pruett image
The prodigal son, an IndyCar race winner in his teens, met the same fate as his father at the 1993 Indy 500. Bumped by teammate Jack Harvey, who he recruited to join Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, Rahal walked over and embraced his friend and was consoled by Harvey, who dealt with conflicting feelings of guilt and joy.
The Speedway, in all of its cruel and giving and torturous ways, left a permanent mark on both men this Sunday.
“As I said to these guys, you’ve just got to be positive,” Rahal said. “And everybody puts a lot into this; we just came up short. This place, it doesn’t come easy. It doesn’t just happen. And we weren’t good enough. You know, we were the slowest of our cars, just on pure pace, all week. It’s unfortunate that happens, but, you know, you’ve got to be positive. You’ve got to be humble and gracious in victory and defeat.”
Jack Harvey has been craving the one thing that’s been missing from his professional life for far too long: feeling normal. On Friday, during qualifying for the Indianapolis Grand Prix, the Briton got his wish as his No. 30 Rahal Letterman Lanigan …
Jack Harvey has been craving the one thing that’s been missing from his professional life for far too long: feeling normal. On Friday, during qualifying for the Indianapolis Grand Prix, the Briton got his wish as his No. 30 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda was a vision of speed on the way to qualifying fourth for the 85-lap contest.
The run is now his best since joining RLL in 2022. At his former team, visits to the Firestone Fast Six with Meyer Shank Racing were common, and he wasn’t too far out of the frame after qualifying ninth at this event for RLL last May,
“It’s just unloading from the trucks and being good, and going into (first practuce) and actually feeling confident,” Harvey told RACER. “And that feeling really hasn’t been there for a little bit. Because when you don’t unload that way, you’re chasing something quite a lot the rest of the weekend. And that series is too hard to catch up very much when that happens.
“I just felt confident through the whole of qualifying, Fantastic performance by the team. This is actually the first time I’m back to a normal qualifying result which I had a lot of in 2020 and 2021. It definitely felt great to be in the car for the whole qualifying and full credit to the team for making it possible.”
Teammate Christian Lundgaard was a rocket as well, earning his first IndyCar pole in the No. 45 Honda as RLL embraced its full potential in time trials. Harvey obviously wanted to be the one to earn RLL’s first pole of the season, but being less than one-tenth behind his heralded teammate was a solid reminder of what he can deliver when all things go according to plan.
“It was a great team performance with Christian on pole and Graham in eighth, so this belongs to everybody at RLL,” Harvey said. “Of course I wanted it to be me because you’re always measuring yourself against your teammates, but we were close and we’re definitely shooting for the podium tomorrow.”
How does a 28-car NTT IndyCar Series grid sound for 2024? Or 29? If the 27 full-timers we have this year weren’t enough, there’s talk of two IndyCar teams adding more entries next year and a brand-new one being created, and with all the other …
How does a 28-car NTT IndyCar Series grid sound for 2024? Or 29?
If the 27 full-timers we have this year weren’t enough, there’s talk of two IndyCar teams adding more entries next year and a brand-new one being created, and with all the other potential movements among current teams and drivers in mind, we’re on the verge of a magnificently hectic silly season.
The first piece in play is Andretti Autosport’s Romain Grosjean, who’s in the last year of his contract with Andretti Autosport but isn’t expected to hit the market after Michael Andretti told us they’re headed towards signing him to an extension. So far, Grosjean is but one of many drivers who are untethered until a new contract is presented or a new team comes calling.
Before we run through the leading free agents, let’s peer inside the teams that will or won’t factor in the hiring sprees.
Among the high-level teams, only one is locked in with their drivers for the coming years as Team Penske are fully sorted through at least 2024 with Will Power, Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin as its title-contending trio.
The story of year-to-year driver consistency among top teams starts and ends there; the majority of Penske’s key rivals will go through at least one significant driver change heading into next season.
Chip Ganassi Racing tops the list of teams that could look radically different by the end of the year: Of its full-time drivers, only Scott Dixon is under a long-term contract. Both sides are keeping calm with the Alex Palou situation, but everyone knows he’s headed to Arrow McLaren at the end of the season. That means a coveted and paying seat could be open. More on that in a moment.
Reigning Indy 500 champ Marcus Ericsson is just of the elements in play at Chip Ganassi Racing.
Marcus Ericsson is in the last year of his current deal and if he leaves, that’s a prime seat in need of a funded driver. It’s unclear if the rideshare in the fourth car between Takuma Sato and Marcus Armstrong is meant to last more than one year, but there are hopes that Armstrong will stay and possibly expand his program to include all the races. Like Ericsson, he brings funding to the car, but that sum would need to increase by a decent amount to add the ovals, unless CGR finds sponsors of its own to cover the tab.
Sato, I’m told, after working hard throughout the offseason to find sponsorship to do the ovals with Ganassi, is unsure what next season might look like. I won’t be surprised if it’s something closer to an Indy-only role unless someone offers him a paid opportunity to return as a full-timer.
And then there’s CGR development driver Kyffin Simpson, who is on the IndyCar horizon. The teenager is in his second year of Indy NXT and has a packed schedule arranged by Ganassi that includes racing in a few sports car series to expedite his learning curve in preparation for a future move to IndyCar. There’s no timetable for the Barbadian’s graduation to the big team, but if he does well this year, I understand he could be stepping up next season, and if all four of its existing cars are full, there’s a chance a fifth IndyCar could be entered to accommodate Simpson.
At Arrow McLaren, Pato O’Ward and Alexander Rossi have long-term deals in place, but Felix Rosenqvist does not. The team will welcome Palou alongside O’Ward and Rossi once we close the season in Monterey, and the early season rumor of looking at running four cars next year was recently confirmed by McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown. Whether that’s a 2024 thing or 2025 is unclear, if it happens at all, but the fact that it’s being discussed internally at this stage of the season is encouraging.
If you look at its three current cars, there’s no room left to sell, and if greater prosperity can be engineered through expansion, McLaren will have its pick of IndyCar free agents and recent F1 talent to draw from for that car.
Within Andretti Autosport’s quartet, Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood are under multi-year deals and they are expected to be joined by Grosjean in that regard. It’s Andretti’s fourth car for Devlin DeFrancesco, who is in the last year of his deal, where change is anticipated.
At Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, Christian Lundgaard is secured, but Graham Rahal and Jack Harvey are in the final year of their contracts. Harvey is one of a few drivers who needs a big showing to convince his team owners that he’s still the right one for the job. If last year’s debut for RLL was a disappointment that produced 22nd in the championship, Harvey’s current fortunes are no better; he’s 23rd.
The same is true of Helio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud at Meyer Shank Racing, both of whom are in the final year of their current deals. A 50-percent turnover seems inevitable, and if the worst start to any season of Pagenaud’s IndyCar career continues, a 100-percent changeover isn’t out of the question. If the rumors are true, one seat could already be committed.
In recent weeks, Tom Blomqvist, MSR’s 29-year-old rocket-fast IMSA prototype champion, has been repeatedly mentioned as being headed to one of the team’s IndyCar seats in 2024. With his vast experience in all forms of racing, including Formula E and the new hybrid GTP cars, Blomqvist might be the perfect person to lead an open-wheel reboot for the team as IndyCar goes hybrid. And if, by chance, RLL moves on from Harvey, would he be welcomed back at MSR where he was on the verge of winning his first race?
Throw in other potential driver changes at Dale Coyne Racing, Ed Carpenter Racing and Juncos Hollinger Racing, and the IndyCar driver market is looking like it will be busier than we’ve seen in many years.
Long Beach has become a popular event for teams, drivers, and their managers to meet and engage in initial talks about interest and future availability, and as such, quite a few breakfasts, coffees and dinners were shared between interested parties. A larger number of private meals and conversations are already scheduled to take place throughout the month of May at Indianapolis, and by the time we get to June, we should have a better feel for who’s going where during the offseason.
To get the pulse of the market, I’ve asked several drivers, managers, team owners, and team principals to name their top free agents, and with the group speaking under the condition of anonymity, it was interesting to hear a consensus form on the leading candidates.
It’s worth noting that the list below doesn’t encompass every free agent, but rather, the top picks by those I spoke with, in order of frontline drivers for the upcoming silly season, starting with:
CALLUM ILOTT
Mentioned first by the paddock more than any other driver, Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Ilott is the proverbial belle of the ball. According to the group, he’s on the radars of Andretti, Ganassi, McLaren, MSR and RLL, and was rumored to be of interest to Team Penske before Will Power signed his new extension.
What’s unclear is whether the Briton is truly free to leave JHR, if there’s a buyout or exit clause that could be used, or if JHR would hold onto him at all costs.
Like Ganassi hiring Scott Dixon from PacWest and Team Penske signing Josef Newgarden from CFH Racing, standout drivers in small teams eventually move upward and this seems like an inevitability for Ilott. Imagining an Andretti lineup of Grosjean, Herta, Kirkwood and Ilott is easy. Picturing Ilott alongside Dixon and other Ganassi stars isn’t hard. If McLaren goes to four cars, an O’Ward-Palou-Rossi-Ilott quartet would be a nightmare. Ilott with Blomqvist or whomever would be big for MSR, and RLL with a Rahal-Lundgaard-Ilott trio has the same big level of potential.
Whatever the scenario and timing might be, one thing is clear, and it’s that Ilott is coveted by more big teams than any other driver on the market, but only by a small margin.
MARCUS ERICSSON
Next on the list is Ganassi’s Ericsson, who was nearly tied with Ilott with first mentions.
The reigning Indy 500 winner is the most interesting free agent in the series for reasons that are wholly unique to Ericsson. Most of his career has been funded by a benevolent backer — Finn Rausing, owner of the Sauber/Alfa Romeo Formula 1 team — who then opened the door to IndyCar for the Swede after F1.
Within the paddock, person after person cited a strong understanding that Ericsson and his backer are done with bringing sponsorship after the season is over. Most of the teams linked to having an interest in Ilott are mirrored with Ericsson: Andretti, MSR, and RLL are understood to want Ganassi’s front-runner in their camps.
Having won two races and finished sixth in the 2021 championship for Ganassi, won the Indy 500 and finished sixth again in 2022, and won the opening race of the new season, it’s fair to say Ericsson has shed the idea of being a driver who needs to bring sponsorship to drive Indy cars.
What you’d hear from those I spoke with is Ericsson wants to be treated like the other top drivers in the series by being hired to deliver those wins and consistent championship results.
It’s here where Ericsson’s situation is unlike any other because at his current team, which has expected funding to be provided each season, the idea of keeping him in 2024 and beyond would reportedly require CGR to convert Ericsson from a paying driver to someone who is signed to drive without bringing a budget just as they do with the entries for Scott Dixon and Alex Palou.
If Ericsson’s backer is indeed done with writing checks, CGR would need to find sponsors to keep Ericsson and the No. 8 Honda on track, or move him to Palou’s No. 10 Honda, which is believed to be funded for next season, and backfill the No. 8 with another paying driver. Just as some high-powered teams want to get their hands on Ilott, Ericsson’s drawing interest from Ganassi’s rivals for the same reason, and one more: Destabilizing one of IndyCar’s perennial title contenders.
First, almost nobody believes Ganassi will let Ericsson go because he’s become such an important part of the team’s success. Second, what’s emerged as an added point of attraction is a bit more sinister.
If any of those rivals can sign Ericsson away and add his annual wins and top fives to their squad, it would be great, but in their quest to displace Ganassi as one of the top two teams in the series, Ericsson’s been spoken of with equal interest to take those wins and top fives away from Ganassi and weaken their program. Nobody said racing is all hugs and kisses.
There was little to show for Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s trip to Texas Motor Speedway a couple of weeks ago, but Long Beach could be a happier hunting ground after a solid opening to the weekend from the team’s three cars. Christian Lundgaard and Jack …
There was little to show for Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s trip to Texas Motor Speedway a couple of weeks ago, but Long Beach could be a happier hunting ground after a solid opening to the weekend from the team’s three cars.
Christian Lundgaard and Jack Harvey finished Friday practice session 10th- and 12-fastest respectively, while Graham Rahal spent most of the afternoon inside the top 10 before dropping back to 16th on his second set of tires.
“I kind of felt coming into the weekend that our street circuit car was showing potential at St. Pete, so I was pretty optimistic, honestly, about what we can achieve this weekend,” Harvey told RACER.
“Compared to other weekends, we’ve unloaded with that speed and it’s just come a little easier than it has at some other races. Straight away, I looked down and thought, ‘Oh, that’s not a bad lap,’ and I think there’s still quite a bit more to come.
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“On the No. 30 car we’re just chasing a little bit of rear stability, but I think the track will rubber in and perhaps give us that. So tonight we’ll sit down and figure out how much or how little we want to do.”
Friday’s running was defined in part by much cooler conditions than the IndyCar field has dealt with at Long Beach over the last couple of years; the ambient temperatures in the 80s and 90s of the recent past making way for conditions in the low 60s. Saturday is forecast to be cooler still, and one of RLL’s priorities overnight will be ensuring its performance won’t be adversely affected.
“One thing we need to do tomorrow is try to activate the tire a little sooner,” Harvey said. “That’s probably going to be our biggest focus overnight (because of the cooler temperatures). It’s something we’ve struggled with before; just trying to activate the tires quick enough. The Andretti cars are very good at that. It’s just something we have to try to figure out tonight – see if we can put the energy into the tires a bit sooner. But I think we’re in pretty good shape.”
Big things were expected from Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing to open 2023 after performing a sweeping reorganization of its technical department during the offseason, and after completing the first two races of the NTT IndyCar Series races of the …
Big things were expected from Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing to open 2023 after performing a sweeping reorganization of its technical department during the offseason, and after completing the first two races of the NTT IndyCar Series races of the year, the Indiana-based team continues to search for the finest version of itself.
A hard crash for RLL sophomore Jack Harvey at St. Petersburg and overall lack of front-running speed presented a challenge in round one; Christian Lundgaard was the team’s best qualifier in 11th and improved to ninth, and Graham Rahal motored from 20th to sixth in the accident-filled event, but the team had its sights set on starting towards the front and finishing in the vicinity of the podium.
Texas Motor Speedway offered another chance for RLL to take a step forward, but like St. Petersburg, speed was elusive from the outset as all three drivers qualified between 24th and 28th. The 250-lap race was a punishing affair for the squad as the trio were lapped before the halfway point with Harvey leading the team home in 18th as Lundgaard followed home in 19th, three laps arrears. Making matters worse, Rahal was wrecked on lap 219, collateral damage in Devlin DeFrancesco’s crash that led his car to turn right into Rahal’s path entering Turn 3.
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Unhurt in the brief 200mph flight and subsequent crash, Rahal held no grudge with the Andretti Autosport driver, but did lament the unsatisfactory start — its second in consecutive seasons — after being checked and cleared by IndyCar’s medical team.
“You know our setup to start the race is so far out of the window, it’s just everything I can do to hang on as long as I did, but that put us a couple laps down,” Rahal said. “Really in this situation, (definitely did) nothing wrong. It’s just a racing deal. It’s unfortunate, but I’m in one piece. You know, I cheated Texas again.”
Thanks to Rahal’s big drive in St Petersburg, the Texas crash and 24th-place finish has only dropped him to 13th in the standings. Lundgaard’s run to 19th moved him down to 14th, and Harvey’s Round 1 crash — also not of his making — and crossing the line in 18th on Sunday has him holding 22nd in the championship leading into Long Beach in two weeks’ time.
If the proud team can muster more pace on Fridays and Saturdays and improve their starting positions, the 2023 season they envisioned will be within reach.
“We move on to the next one, but definitely frustrated,” Rahal said. “I think this entire weekend we expected a lot out of the team and none of us were in the window, and for a team like us it’s absolutely unacceptable.”
