Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Jack Harvey in the No.30 Kustom Entertainment Honda ended the opening practice session of the 2023 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season at the Firestone Grand Prix of St Petersburg presented by RP Funding was the fastest of RLL’s three cars ending the day in P17 with a time of 1:02.3236s and speaking following the action he commented saying:
I thought that was a good start for us there. Every time we went on track, I thought we were a top-10 car. We went to new tires at the end to improve our time but found another car that wouldn’t move out of the way but I thought we had a potential top-10 car. The balance was pretty good so hopefully we just keep that going throughout the weekend.
Christian Lundgaard in the No.45 Hy-Vee Honda ended the day in 25th place with a time of 01:03.0412s and speaking following the action he commented saying:
That was not the way we wanted to finish the session, (brushed the wall; damaged car) but I think there are some positives to take from the session. We didn’t really have the competitive car that we hoped and expected to have. The wind is quite strong out there and if that’s what messed up the balance, I don’t know. Apparently, that’s across two of our cars so we’ll have to dig deep tomorrow and see how much we can improve for qualifying.
It was a tricky session for Graham Rahal in the No.15 United Rentals Honda ended the day in P26 following a disappointing day for the team and speaking following the action Rahal commented saying:
We are really lacking rear support and grip, which is natural. Everybody is lacking grip but we’ve got to find a way to get some consistency. I can’t hit the brake pedal. I went straight on five or six times in the session which is not normal, and we ultimately ended our session with a wall brush due to the rear brakes locking, which shit the engine off and the whole deal. We’ve got to look into it, figure out what’s going on and get the United Rentals car turned around overnight. Its close, its competitive. Only 1.4 seconds separates us from first and we’re in the back. Frankly I feel that I can’t push at all. That’s a positive actually, which may sound weird, but it’s a positive because I think we can find a lot of that gap if we can find some stability.”