Indianapolis 500 – Indianapolis Motor Speedway
IZOD IndyCar Series
PRACTICE NOTES/QUOTES – Thursday, May 16, 2013
RAHAL, JAKES AND JOURDAIN JR. REPORT IMPROVEMENTS TO SOME AREAS OF THEIR RACE CAR SET-UPS
1) Carlos Munoz 225.163 mph / 39.9711 70 laps
29) James Jakes 220.676 mph / 40.7838 59 laps
30) Graham Rahal 220.555 mph / 40.8061 64 laps
32) Michel Jourdain Jr. 218.073 mph / 41.2705 89 laps
GRAHAM RAHAL, No. 15 Midas / Big O Tires Dallara/Honda/Firestone: “I think today went pretty good, we found a lot of things to make our car better. For our qualifying setup, I feel really good. The Midas / Big O Tires car was second of the Honda’s on the no tow report. We still have to work on the race setup, we have to make it better. We’ll see what Fast Friday brings. I know there is still some stuff in the bag. We never really got a tow lap though; our fastest lap was by ourselves so I don’t feel too bad about that. It doesn’t look good if you just look at the time sheets without taking that into consideration but everything is all right.”
JAMES JAKES, No. 16 Acorn Stairlifts Dallara/Honda/Firestone: “We made some great steps today with the Acorn Stairlifts car. To be honest, it’s been going pretty well all week. We are just working with the plan that we have had all week, trying not to concentrate too much on the times on the tow reports but getting the car good in traffic and then looking for single lap pace with no one else out there an we ended up fourth of the Honda’s on the no tow report. The guys did a great job today. They have had a long few days so it’s nice to get done early so they can get home, get some rest and get ready for a big weekend.”
MICHEL JOURDAIN JR, No. 17 Office Depot Dallara/Honda/Firestone: “We felt like we were making big progress on the Office Depot car, especially by ourselves. We were much happier as the day was going on but we tried to run in traffic and we just couldn’t. We have a lot of work to do to run in traffic.”
RAHAL LETTERMAN LANIGAN RACING AT INDY … The team’s highest start and finish in the event came in 2004 when Buddy Rice won from pole. In addition, the team has earned a total of four podiums (2nd – Meira 2005; 3rd – Rahal 1994, 1995). The team was in contention to win the race as recent as 2011 when Bertrand Baguette led laps 139-140 and laps 189-197 of the 200 lap race. Had a caution come our before Baguette was forced to pit for a splash of fuel, he might have been the victor. The race ultimately ended under caution when JR Hildebrand crashed on the front straight while in the lead on the final lap… The 2013 race will mark the 16th year for the team in the event. Prior to 2013, the team prepared a total of 28 entries for drivers such as Bobby Rahal (1992-1995), Mike Groff (1994), Raul Boesel (1995), Jimmy Vasser (2002-2003), Kenny Brack (2003, 2005), Buddy Rice (2004, 2006; DNC 2005 due to practice crash), Vitor Meira (2004, 2005), Roger Yasukawa (2004), Danica Patrick (2005, 2006), Jeff Simmons (2006, 2007), Scott Sharp (2007), Ryan Hunter-Reay (2008), Oriol Servia (2009), Graham Rahal (2010), Bertrand Baguette (2011), Jay Howard (2011), Takuma Sato (2012) and Michel Jourdain (2012). The No. 15 Midas / Big O Tires entry for Graham Rahal, No. 16 Acorn Stairlifts entry for James Jakes and No. 17 Office Depot entry for Michel Jourdain will bring that total to 31 in 2013.
NEXT UP: Practice will resume tomorrow from 12-6 PM ET. The 97th Indianapolis 500 race will be May 26 and will be televised by ABC at 12 p.m. (ET) and broadcast by the IMS Radio Network on Sirius XM (XM 94 and Sirius 212). Timing and Scoring information is available for all sessions from www.indycar.com.
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