Graham Rahal in the No.15 Fifth Third Bank Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda says that the balance of his car was far off where it should have been as he starts the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix on the streets of Nashville from 15th place. Speaking following the action, Rahal said:
My balance was just really, really far off there. I had no rotation, the car had a massive amount of under steer. I don’t know what Christian said but our cars aren’t too dissimilar so I bet it’s a similar message. Yeah, it just wasn’t there. Even on the blacks, it just didn’t want to turn. On the primary tires, you could see we had a lot of issues with the front tires locking so I just didn’t get two good laps and just didn’t get a good run at all but then you go to the alternate tires. In Turn 4, I about drove straight into the fence (wall) just with understeer, no lockups no nothing. It just didn’t turn so tomorrow will be a new day for the Fifth Third Bank car. It’s a bummer to have that but it’s going to be close. It’s going to be a dog fight so we will see what happens.”
Christian Lundgaard in the No.45 Hy-Vee Honda starts the race from 13th place and speaking following the action, the Dane who took victory on the last street course race in Toronto commented saying:
Obviously being out in Q1 was not really what we wanted to happen. I think our Hy-Vee car was stronger. We made some changes overnight which we didn’t get to verify in Practice 2, obviously, because of the rain which certainly wasn’t the move so here we are. It’s frustrating because I feel that not being able to verify the changes is the reason we’re not through (Round 1). Quite honestly it sucks because we had a car that was fast enough to be in the Top 3 but those changes made it real tough today.”
Jack Harvey in the No.30 Kustom Entertainment Honda starts the race from 22nd place and speaking following the action he commented saying:
“I was just pushing it and locked up in Turn 8 which is really random actually because I haven’t had an issue there all weekend. Ultimately it only cost me one position (after a penalty that omitted his fastest lap). It’s qualifying at the end of the day; I was just going for it and then I think on reds at the end, I think my best rolling lap would’ve been two or 3/10ths quicker than what we did. But we started out well, started to run out of grip and you know just kind of only slightly improved. I think me, Graham, and Chrisitan had about the same lap times and I think our group (Group 2) looked pretty stacked compared to Group 1 but it’s how it goes. Some weekends that’s in your favor and some it’s not. This place can be a bit of a crash fest so we need to make sure we have a smart and sensible race tomorrow and I think we should be able to get a good result even if we don’t have a raw speed maybe we can still get our car a good result.”