Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Christian Lundgaard in the No.45 Hy-Vee Honda started Sunday’s Children’s Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park from 3rd place on the grid and came home in fifth place following a dramatic race for the Danish driver. Speaking following the action he commented saying:
The yellows didn’t really go in our favor; they happened all at the wrong time. The track position that the two Penske cars had helped them massively. We planned to do a three-stopper and split the strategy between the 15 and the 45 and I think that first yellow taking so long was a little bit of a benefit for both strategies but every other yellow didn’t help us whatsoever. It was a frustrating day. We had an issue on the car even before the race started and managed that for the rest of the race as well. We lost out a little on each pit cycle as well. As a team we have stepped forward and I think there is a lot of potential for us. We just need to keep digging and keep improving collectively.”
Graham Rahal started the race from seventh place and came home in 11th having been caught up in an incident with Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon in the early stages of the race and speaking following the action he said:
That Lap 56 yellow absolutely killed those top four or five cars on the two-stop strategy and put us right to the back. It was very unfortunate to have that when I thought we were doing a good job although it was very hard to get the fuel numbers necessary, which I was surprised about. And I was surprised at the pace that Palou and some of the other guys could do and get the (fuel) number needed, and still run quicker than us. It was just one of those days we’ve just got to move on to the Indy GP now and see what we can do. We’re close but there is obviously still some improvement to do on the No, 15. Christian said it was the same case on the 45; it was just very hard to follow compared to some of the other cars. The cars can be fast but we’ve just got to get them to follow closer to be able to make some passes. On to Indy.”
Pietro Fittipaldi retired from the race following contact on lap 45 and speaking following the action he commented saying:
“It was a high-speed corner, there was no room there for two cars. He just kept expecting people to just move out of the way and obviously there was no room. I tried giving him as much room as I could. You’re basically flat out through that corner. He just slid up and I got hit and went straight into the wall. It’s unfortunate. I just wanted to have a clean race. We had that issue in Practice 2 so we didn’t get any running and qualifying was tough because of that because we were down on laps. We were having a good race. We were inside the top-20 on a fuel saving strategy and had a lot of pace. I thought ‘This is going to be good.’ And just comes, so aggressive. I don’t understand where he was trying to go there. So, yeah, it sucks. It really does.”