Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
Honda Indy Toronto – Streets around Exhibition Place
Verizon IndyCar Series
RACE NOTES/QUOTES – Sunday, July 16, 2017
THE TIMING OF A CAUTION LIMITED RAHAL TO A NINTH PLACE FINISH IN THE HONDA INDY TORONTO AFTER STARTING SECOND
GRAHAM RAHAL, No. 15 Rousseau Metal Dallara/Honda/Firestone: “I got the call after we passed pit in. Newgarden was just lucky because he was falling off the train of the three of us (Castroneves, Pagenaud and Rahal). He was 2.5 seconds behind us, or just enough to get the call. When they said to me ‘Pit, pit’ I was turning into Turn 9. Obviously I can’t see what’s going on in Turn 1. We played it right today but got unlucky. The three best cars didn’t win the race or finish 1-2-3. There was nobody that was a match for the three of us all day. It’s a shame but sometimes luck plays a role in these things. Congrats to Josef, he still brought it home but you could see in the first stint that Simon, Helio and myself were taking off and I felt that was a pretty easy pace for us to maintain and go from there. Obviously I’m disappointed for the Rousseau team. I’m happy for our United Rentals Turns for Troops (lap completed) program. We raised another several thousand dollars to help our veterans. But I’m frustrated because today was a day we should have easily gained a lot of points on Dixon, Newgarden and everybody else but unfortunately the way the officials have decided to close the pits these days, luck plays a huge factor and today it bit us. We got it home and got another top-10 but I’m disappointed and rightly so, and our guys are too. They know the car that we put on the track today was a car that was capable of winning this race. The guys did a great job in the pits and I think we have proven that the No. 15 is one of the cars to beat each and every single weekend and probably legitimately one of the few that can take it to Penske every weekend. I’m just extremely proud of this organization.”
NEXT UP: The series will take next weekend off before returning to action on July 28-30 for the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio. Graham Rahal won the 2015 race after having led a race-high 23 laps to win his home event. Based on his qualifying effort in Toronto, he earned the second pit box closest to pit out for that event.
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