NTT IndyCar Series team owner Bobby Rahal has seen his team grow dramatically in recent seasons. It wasn’t that long that Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing was a part-time operation in 2011. It returned to full-time duty in 2012 and became a championship contender with the re-emergence of Graham Rahal in 2015.
RLL expanded to two cars in 2018 with the addition of Takuma Sato to the lineup that included Rahal.
For 2020, team owner Bobby Rahal, along with his partners David Letterman and Michael Lanigan, are seriously considering a three-driver lineup.
“We’re been working on it,” driver Graham Rahal told NTT INDYCAR Mobile. “My wife and I hosted some potential sponsors two weeks ago. It wouldn’t be on my car, but it would certainly help us fund a third car. We’re trying hard.
“There is one great thing right now, it’s easier to have a conversation now days to open the door when you bring up IndyCar racing, which wasn’t the case five, six or seven years ago. It is improving. We are in a better place as teams. Hopefully, there is a good possibility.
“For us to fight with the big dogs, frankly we need it. We need the resources, the ability to grow our platform, to get more data and to perform a little bit better across the table.”
Last Friday’s announcement that McLaren was joining forces with Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports to form Arrow McLaren Racing SP has shuffled up the lineup of drivers that may be available next season.
It also creates an opportunity for RLL to form an engineering alliance with Meyer Shank Racing, which fields the No. 60 AutoNation/SiriusXM Honda for 26-year-old Jack Harvey. This year, that team is competing in a 10-race schedule in the series with hopes of expansion next season.
MSR is committed to Honda and had a strategic alliance with Arrow Schmidt Peterson. By joining forces with McLaren, it will become a Chevrolet team and as team owner Michael Shank told NTT INDYCAR Mobile on Tuesday, he is talking to several current Honda teams to form an engineering alliance for next season.
Bobby Rahal indicated he likes Shank a lot and has a great deal of respect for him and his team.
“We’ve spoken about working together for a number of years on several different projects but have yet to get anything together,” Rahal told NTT INDYCAR Mobile.
Graham Rahal sees value to having an alliance with another team, using Andretti Autosport and Harding Steinbrenner Racing as an example.
“All of us know Herta drives in an Andretti car, but because it is not labeled as Andretti, they are allowed to have double the testing,” Graham Rahal said. “Herta gets all of his test dates and Andretti gets all of their test dates.
“For us as a team, we just need more data to get better and compete. We are close as a team to being a championship caliber team and a race winning program consistently. We just need a little push.
“A third car with the right driver could definitely put us down the right path.”
Next up for the NTT IndyCar Series is Sunday's race at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway. The ABC Supply 500 is the first of four races to close the 2019 season. NBCSN will have the television coverage at 2 p.m. ET (green flag at 2:45 p.m. ET). The Advance Auto Parts INDYCAR Radio Network provides the radio call, with coverage on SiriusXM Radio (XM 209, Sirius 98, Internet/App 970). Qualifying is Saturday at 12:30 p.m. (delayed on NBCSN until 2:30 p.m.).