Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Graham Rahal in the No.15 Fleet Cost and Care Honda says he hopes that the team can end up in Victory Lane at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday.
Rahal has four podiums here including victory in 2016.
Speaking ahead of the race this weekend, Rahal said:
Last year obviously wasn’t the result that we were looking. We had contact with Devlin, which took us out but we happened to be moving forward in a hurry. Last year, qualifying for our whole team did not go well but in the race we were going forward quite quickly, actually until the contact. With Fleet Cost & Care (as primary), we have always had a good run there. I think back to the very beginning of the relationship when we finished on the podium and also having won there in 2016, it’s a special place to me. I know that we can compete, I know that we can be up front and that’s going to be our goal. There is a lot that we’ve learned over the last six months to understand why weren’t fast there last year and we are turning our attention to that and making sure we get better and hopefully get this Fleet Cost & Care car in Victory Lane.”
Jack Harvey in the No.30 PeopleReady Homda has a best oval finish of seventh place which came at TMS and looking ahead to the race he said:
I’m really excited to drive the No. 30 PeopleReady Honda in Texas. It’s still a track that I have a lot of great memories from even if last year didn’t go how we hoped. Coming into the weekend I’m physically and mentally feeling really good and I’m excited to just get back on track and turn the page from St. Pete and the aftermath of that. It’s going to be a quick weekend, not just in the speed on the track but also in terms of the flow of the weekend. At this point, I’m just excited to get there and take our PeopleReady car to the front as quickly as we can and as far forward as we can.”
Christian Lundgaard in the No.45 Hy-Vee Honda returns to the scene of his maiden oval race saying:
“It was my first oval race ever last year at Texas. Going into the race weekend, it was all about getting through the race and getting all the mileage done. It’s not a secret that we didn’t have the best qualifying as a team. We all started quite far back but I think our race car was one of the absolute best on the grid, which is a positive to take from the weekend. We had a lot of fuel issues throughout the race which kind of ruined our race. We had a 25-second stop which put us far back but we drove back into the top-10 and then had a racing incident with Colton (Herta) which was unfortunate and ended our race there but overall we had the pace to finish at least in the top five, starting from the back of the grid. We don’t want to start from the back of the grid this year, but we definitely want to finish in the top five.”
There is more action coming up for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing as Katherine Legge and INDY NXT champion Linus Lundqvist on Monday.