Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
102nd Running of the Indianapolis 500
Verizon IndyCar Series
QUALIFYING DAY 2 NOTES/QUOTES – May 20, 2018
THE FIELD IS SET FOR THE 102ND RUNNING OF THE INDY 500; SATO 16TH, SERVIA 26TH AND RAHAL 30TH
1st: Ed Carpenter 4-lap avg. speed of 229.618 mph (L1: 230.088, L2: 229.808, L3: 229.519, L4: 229.061)
16th: Takuma Sato 4-lap avg. speed of 226.557 mph (L1: 226.856, L2: 226.637, L3: 226.468, L4: 226.268)
26th: Graham Rahal 4-lap avg. speed of 225.327 mph (L1: 225.676, L2: 225.467, L3: 225.191, L4: 224.975)
30th: Oriol Servia 4-lap avg. speed of 225.699 mph (L1: 226.093, L2: 225.830, L3: 225.531, L4: 225.344)
GRAHAM RAHAL, No. 15 United Rentals Dallara/Honda/Firestone: “I’m happy to be in the race. From the word go on Tuesday we struggled with pace. Everyone on this United Rentals team has worked as hard as they possibly could. I ran the exact same setup as Takuma but the car is a mile and a half an hour slower. It makes no sense but that is the fact. At the end of this, what we can take away is that it’s been a great team-building exercise. All three teams – the 15, 30 and 64 guys – had their backs up against the wall and we all made it in. We will practice tomorrow and focus on the race!”
TAKUMA SATO, No. 30 Mi-Jack / Panasonic Dallara/Honda/Firestone: “We found some consistency. We are trying to find the ultimate speed and are still working on that but we found some consistency. The engineering group is really working hard. The three of us had kind of a difficult day yesterday but at least we were happy and at least we got a consistent run out of it today. We definitely learned a lot and made a step forward. Now we have a completely different scenario concentrating on the race car. We have some time to work on the race car between Monday and Carb Day. In traffic the car has to be really strong and consistency is important too. If it is a hot race, at the end of the race everyone will struggle with tire degradation. I think that’s the one we really need to work on.”
ORIOL SERVIA, No. 64 Scuderia Corsa / Manitowoc Dallara/Honda/Firestone, entered by Scuderia Corsa with RLL: “We just tried to get a good base line today, nothing crazy, to get a solid four laps. I feel we are in a good place to regain confidence from yesterday. Now we just need to focus on the race. We have a good place to go back to; Thursday we had a good car in traffic. Obviously we wanted to start way more forward than where we are but I have come from the back many times in this race. It just makes your life easier when you start from the front. But I guess I am going to have to work a little hard on May 27th but that is what we are here for!”
NEXT UP: Practice will take place tomorrow from 12:30-4:00 PM ET and Carb Day will be Friday, May 25.
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