Christian Lundgaard in the No.45 Hy-Vee Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda had a fantastic qualifying session for Saturday’s Sonsio Grand Prix of Indianapolis on the IMS road course as he will start the race from the front row alongside Alex Palou. Lundgaard set a fastest qualifying time of 01:09.0921s.
Speaking following the qualifying action, Lundgaard commented saying:
“I must say I’m a little disappointed. There was only one more guy to beat. We’ve done it before. We’ve been on the pole here in the No. 45 Hy-Vee Honda. We’ve also started second. That will now be the second time in a row that I’ll do that after getting beaten by Graham here last year. But I think as a team, we need to be proud of always knocking on the door when we’re here. We’re always competitive, and yet we’re still trying to find different things and make different things work, which was an approach we took for this weekend because we knew we had a place to fall back to. It’s kind of one of those weekends where we know we can experiment a little bit more and try to improve the overall road course package. I want to win this one for the guys. I feel like we need redemption. We’ve only stood on the podium here once but we want to win.”
Graham Rahal in the Fifth Third Bank Honda overcame an engine and clutch issue to start the race from ninth place, where he finished the race in second place last year. Speaking following the action, Rahal said:
We’ve not had an easy day; that’s the facts. Anything that could go wrong, has gone wrong today but the guys stuck with it and got me out of the pits on the first run by pushing and just getting the car to go (clutch issue). I would have liked better for Fifth Third Bank but man, we’ve had a heck of a day. It’s going to be a tough race from ninth. We would like to be a lot further forward. I think Christian will be very strong in the race because we know what he can do here, and we know what our cars area capable of although I don’t think we’re as good as we were in Race 2 last year. The guys did a wonderful job to get the engine replaced and then somehow a clutch failed in qualifying. I don’t think it’s anything we caused because it worked in the second session and then it failed in qualifying. We’re going to do everything we can tomorrow to start the Month of May off right
Pietro Fittipaldi starts the race from P11 with a time of 01:09.3698s and speaking following the action, he said:
The car was fantastic. We made it into Round 2 in qualifying and I’m super happy and proud of the team for the job everyone did. We’re progressing. The first two races of the season were already very good at St. Pete and Thermal, but we got hit with a lot of adversity the past two races. But we worked very well together as a team and regrouped, and we executed well here is qualifying and are starting on P11 tomorrow and will build that momentum back up. I feel we have a good shot from P11 but the field is so tight. But I do feel confident with the car with the car we have. The goal is to go out there, have a clean race, execute well and if we do that, we’re going to have a good finish.