AVONDALE, Arizona – After dominating a preseason full-series test at ISM Raceway in February, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing entered the Desert Diamond West Valley Casino Phoenix Grand Prix with high hopes of success.
But work remains to be done after drivers Graham Rahal and Takuma Sato qualified mid-pack for the 250-lap race that airs live at 9 p.m. ET on NBCSN and the Advance Auto Parts INDYCAR Radio Network. Rahal will start on the outside of Row 6 in the No. 15 One Cure Honda and Sato on the inside of Row 7 in the No. 30 Mi-Jack / Panasonic Honda.
The two cars were evenly matched throughout Friday’s sessions. They ran 17th and 18th in the first practice session but improved to ninth and 10th in the all-important final night practice in race conditions.
“My car in qualifying wasn’t a mile off,” said Rahal, coming off a second-place finish in the March 11 season opener, the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
“No, it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful by any stretch of the imagination, either. We just had a lot of understeer, which around here, unless you have literally the perfect balance, lap times are going to reflect a small, small imbalance. And that’s what happened to us.”
Rahal’s crew made changes to his car for qualifying after getting feedback from Sato’s attempt.
“We reacted heavily to what we got from Takuma, which is fine,” Rahal said. “His car is loose, so we just responded and it probably tipped our car over a little bit, but having said that, yeah, we haven’t been great. Don’t know why. We showed up with basically the same car that we tested with. Why would it not work, you know?”
Rahal added that he felt better about his car as the day progressed, through qualifying and the final practice.
“It’s already giving me more positive signs, but at the end of the day, (qualifying) 12th is not great but it’s a place we can race from. As long as we can stay out of trouble and all that sort of stuff, we’ll be OK.”
Sato, the 2017 Indianapolis 500 champion who returned to RLL this season after racing elsewhere for five seasons, said his car was “quite a bit off” from where it was expected to be.
“I think the temperatures and the conditions really made this happen and really confused us as well,” Sato said.
“In (first) practice, we kind of waited a bit until the track conditions got better, but maybe a little mistake that we shouldn’t have shortened the time on ourselves, and basically had to change the car quite a lot to come to (qualifying). So it’s still a little of an unknown situation.
“Still the car is sliding and I wiggled twice in the qualifying session, so the car isn’t happy. It’s quite challenging, but I think compared to the practice, the car is much better.”
The Verizon IndyCar Series and ISM Raceway are celebrating the 25th anniversary of Mario Andretti’s final Indy car win this weekend, which came April 4, 1993 at the Phoenix track. Acknowledging his family’s rivalry with the Andrettis, a wide grin came across Rahal’s at the thought of crashing the party by winning tonight.
“Well, let’s all hope that can happen,” said Rahal, whose father and team co-owner, Bobby Rahal, was a two-time race winner at Phoenix. “It’d put a smile on a lot of faces, certainly in this camp. At the end of the day, it’s an Andretti celebration, but really it’s a Mario celebration and certainly he’s a great guy to honor. Really, there’s none better.
“I’m not even thinking about that. I’m literally just solely focused on getting through here with good points. This has never been a place that we’ve been overly strong at as a team. Yeah, we finished fifth here two years ago or something, but it’s not a place we’ve been lights-out really strong, so I’m hopeful that we can get out of here with really good points and find a way to have a good race.”