Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
Firestone 600 – Texas Motor Speedway
Verizon IndyCar Series
QUALIFYING NOTES/QUOTES – June 6, 2014
RAHAL QUALIFIED 21ST FOR THE FIRESTONE 600 AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
POLE: Will Power 2-lap avg. speed of 218.896 mph (L1: 23.8579, L2: 24.0005)
21st: Graham Rahal 2-lap avg. speed of 213.292 mph (L1: 24.4866, L2: 24.6291)
GRAHAM RAHAL, No. 15 National Guard Dallara/Honda/Firestone: “Your starting position here isn’t everything but it’s just frustrating to qualify where we did because I thought we had a pretty good car in practice. Our race car is pretty good but I was pretty nervous about our qualifying car. Frankly the rear just wasn’t underneath us at all so we just need to go back and look at the data and see what we can do to improve the situation. The race is what counts and that’s what we’re working toward. Obviously we showed that we still have a long way to go. I think we will race better than we ran in qualifying but we’ve got to find some speed.”
RLL AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY: The Firestone 600 will mark the 12th event for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL) at the 1.5-mile, high-banked Texas Motor Speedway oval. The team’s highest start of POLE with Scott Sharp came in 2007 and highest finish of SECOND came in 2005 with Vitor Meira. The team earned another front row start in 2004 when Buddy Rice qualified second. Prior to the 2014 event, the team prepared a total of 17 entries for drivers such as Kenny Brack (2003 x2), Buddy Rice (2004 x2; 2005, 2006), Vitor Meira (2004 x2; 2005), Danica Patrick (2005, 2006), Jeff Simmons (2007), Ryan Hunter-Reay (2008), Jay Howard (2011, Schmidt/RLL), Takuma Sato (2012) Graham Rahal (2013) and James Jakes (2013). The team has earned three top-five finishes and six top-10’s at the track. The No. 15 National Guard entry for Graham Rahal will bring that total to 20 in2014. Last year, Rahal qualified 19th, started 17th due to engine change penalties ahead on the grip and finished 21st after struggling with the handling of his race car. James Jakes earned a career-best oval qualifying position at Texas of 10th and ran as high as fourth but pitted from the position for fuel with 16 laps to go and finished 12th.
NEXT UP: There will be a 30-minute practice session from 6:45-7:15 p.m. CT tonight and the Firestone 600 will take the Green Flag at 7:50 p.m. CT. Live coverage will begin at 8 p.m. ET on NBCSN.
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