As drivers line up for the Sonsio Grand Prix, Graham Rahal’s stunning performance for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing on Friday will place him second behind Alex Palou, and just ahead of his rookie teammate Louis Foster in third. Devlin DeFrancesco will start just behind in fifth place. How did RLL’s best-ever qualifying session finally come together?
Fast Six qualifying capped off a historic day for RLL, which placed all three of its drivers in the Firestone Fast Six on the 2.439-mile road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a much-needed result in the midst of an otherwise difficult start to the season for the organization.
Aside from Louis Foster's tenth starting position at The Thermal Club, RLL has struggled for performance in both qualifying and races, with Rahal as the team's top driver in the standings, in 16th place.
"It's a huge day for us. Really happy for these two guys and everybody in our organization. It's been a lot of hard work. I think coming into this weekend we expected to do well here, but I don't think we necessarily unloaded in a great place this morning. I don't know, we were just fighting with the back of the cars. It's cold though, so it's hard to tell what the conditions are like because things change throughout the day," as Graham Rahal spoke about the result after qualifying.
"We fought hard today. I thought we made a lot of improvements. There's a lot of great feedback between all three of us trying to figure out the right steps forward as we go into qualifying. You know, we were all just standing out there talking.
"I wish we could understand what works here that we could take everywhere else, because it would certainly be nice to have that confidence to go to any track. We're not going to complain. Huge, huge, huge deal for us to have three cars in the top five. Huge. For Honda to do what they did and to have so many cars, so competitive. I'm excited for tomorrow.”
Practice set the stage for qualifying
The RLL camp began to build on its great qualifying performance after a 1-2-3 led by Rahal in the second practice session, for which the team made the key decision to run on alternate tires (red sidewall) in preparation for their qualifying session.
"Coming into this weekend, we all talked yesterday about, look, if we come out of Practice 1 and we feel good, okay, we won't run reds, and we'll just run red-red in qualifying. If we feel dominant, then we won't do red-red in qualifying. We'll do black-red. If we don't leave practice 1 feeling great, then we have to leave practice 2 feeling great. That's what we did," explained Rahal, whose best qualifying finish of the 2025 season through Friday was 16th at Long Beach.
"I think it was just nice strategically that something actually went right. I mean, that's probably the most rewarding thing for all of us sitting up here. We thought long and hard this week about how we've got to maximize qualifying. We need to start up front because we have pace and we haven't done that this year. I think it just feels good to see all the methodology and all the thinking come together like this.”
Rahal: RLL will be ‘very strong’ in the race
Graham Rahal was adamant that the team will be able to translate Friday's performance into Saturday's race as he looks to add to his strong resume of three podiums at the IMS road course, the last coming in 2023.
"I think we're going to be very strong tomorrow. I think if we can work as a team in the morning and make sure we can get the cars because there's going to be some tire deg and it's going to be hotter tomorrow than it was today. If we can work to get all our tires in the right zone, we should all have a strong day today.
Sure, Rahal will have to deal with a guy named Alex Palou, who will be starting on the pole after another stellar performance, but he is ready for the challenge.
"Obviously, Alex, I don't know what we have to do to beat him. I don't know if anybody does. We're going to give it our all. If there's one place I'm confident we've run up front a lot, it's here. It would be nice to get over that hump and get a win for sure.
