Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Graham Rahal, driver of the No.15 IPacket Honda says he is looking forward to the season-ending Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca this weekend.
Rahal has claimed pole for the last two road course events in Portland and the Indy road course and will be hoping that this momentum continues into the weekend.
I’m excited for Laguna. I think our road course pace as of recent should continue there. Obviously, the place has been completely resurfaced so it’s going to be quite different from what we’ve had there before. I would imagine tire degradation will be improved compared to what we’ve had in the past. It will also be interesting to see what tire we are running there and how that will play out. It’s good to go back. With it being the last race of the year, hopefully we can keep up our road course form as of late and be competitive and put a solid finish together in the iPacket car.”
Juri Vips will make his second NTT INDYCAR SERIES race start this weekend and his first at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.
I’m really looking forward to Laguna Seca. The track has amazing history and I’m really excited to drive there. As we saw last weekend, there were flashes of amazing speed from our package, with Christian being quickest in practice and Graham getting pole so I’m looking forward to it now that I’m more comfortable with the car, extracting that performance also. For Laguna Seca, I did a day in the Honda simulator and also watched a bunch of videos and reviewed data from previous years. Laguna will be a lot easier since, before Portland, I hadn’t raced at all this year so now having the next race straight after, I will know much more what to expect.”
Christian Lundgaard is hoping for another strong finish here having clinched the rookie of the year award in 2022 with a fifth place finish.
Having the rookie title go all the way to the season finale at Laguna Seca will always be a fond memory for me. The track has been resurfaced so I think everyone will come there with a new mindset of perhaps what we showed up at Road America with, setup wise. We were competitive there so we will likely also be at Laguna Seca. We know we have a strong road course car although it didn’t work out for us at Portland but we will see what we can do in Laguna. We want to stay at least eighth in the championship so that is the main target.”