As drivers line up for the Sonsio Grand Prix, Graham Rahal’s gorgeous efficiency for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing on Friday will place him second behind Alex Palou, and simply forward of his rookie teammate Louis Foster in third. Devlin DeFrancesco will begin simply behind in fifth place. How did RLL’s best-ever qualifying session lastly come collectively?
Quick Six qualifying capped off a historic day for RLL, which positioned all three of its drivers within the Firestone Quick Six on the two.439-mile highway course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a much-needed consequence within the midst of an in any other case tough begin to the season for the group.
Apart from Louis Foster’s tenth beginning place at The Thermal Membership, RLL has struggled for efficiency in each qualifying and races, with Rahal because the staff’s prime driver within the standings, in sixteenth place.
“It is an enormous day for us. Actually completely satisfied for these two guys and everyone in our group. It has been a whole lot of onerous work. I feel coming into this weekend we anticipated to do nicely right here, however I do not assume we essentially unloaded in an amazing place this morning. I do not know, we have been simply combating with the again of the automobiles. It is chilly although, so it is onerous to inform what the situations are like as a result of issues change all through the day,” as Graham Rahal spoke concerning the consequence after qualifying.
“We fought onerous in the present day. I assumed we made a whole lot of enhancements. There’s a whole lot of nice suggestions between all three of us making an attempt to determine the suitable steps ahead as we go into qualifying. You recognize, we have been all simply standing on the market speaking.
“I want we may perceive what works right here that we may take in every single place else, as a result of it might actually be good to have that confidence to go to any observe. We’re not going to complain. Large, large, large deal for us to have three automobiles within the prime 5. Large. For Honda to do what they did and to have so many automobiles, so aggressive. I am excited for tomorrow.”
Observe set the stage for qualifying
Graham Rahal, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
Picture by: Penske Leisure
The RLL camp started to construct on its nice qualifying efficiency after a 1-2-3 led by Rahal within the second observe session, for which the staff made the important thing resolution to run on alternate tires (purple sidewall) in preparation for his or her qualifying session.
“Coming into this weekend, all of us talked yesterday about, look, if we come out of Observe 1 and we really feel good, okay, we can’t run reds, and we’ll simply run red-red in qualifying. If we really feel dominant, then we can’t do red-red in qualifying. We’ll do black-red. If we do not depart observe 1 feeling nice, then we now have to go away observe 2 feeling nice. That is what we did,” defined Rahal, whose finest qualifying end of the 2025 season by means of Friday was sixteenth at Lengthy Seaside.
“I feel it was simply good strategically that one thing truly went proper. I imply, that is most likely probably the most rewarding factor for all of us sitting up right here. We thought lengthy and onerous this week about how we have to maximise qualifying. We have to begin up entrance as a result of we now have tempo and we’ve not executed that this 12 months. I feel it simply feels good to see all of the methodology and all of the considering come collectively like this.”
Rahal: RLL will likely be ‘very robust’ within the race
Louis Foster, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
Picture by: Penske Leisure
Graham Rahal was adamant that the staff will have the ability to translate Friday’s efficiency into Saturday’s race as he appears to be like so as to add to his robust resume of three podiums on the IMS highway course, the final coming in 2023.
“I feel we will be very robust tomorrow. I feel if we will work as a staff within the morning and ensure we will get the automobiles as a result of there’s going to be some tire deg and it’ll be hotter tomorrow than it was in the present day. If we will work to get all our tires in the suitable zone, we must always all have a powerful day in the present day.
Positive, Rahal should take care of a man named Alex Palou, who will likely be beginning on the pole after one other stellar efficiency, however he’s prepared for the problem.
“Clearly, Alex, I do not know what we now have to do to beat him. I do not know if anyone does. We will give it our all. If there’s one place I am assured we have run up entrance quite a bit, it is right here. It might be good to recover from that hump and get a win for positive.
On this article
IndyCar
A.J. Foyt Enterprises
Be the primary to know and subscribe for real-time information e-mail updates on these subjects
Subscribe to information alerts
