RLL Season-Opener PREVIEW – Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

Pre-Race Notes
Round 1 of 17 in the 2025 NTT INDYCAR SERIES

DATE:     Friday – Sunday, February 28 – March 2, 2025
PRACTICE BROADCASTS:     Live on FS1 on Friday from 3:00–4:30 p.m. ET, live on FS2 on Saturday from 10:00–11:30 a.m. ET and live on FS2 on Sunday from 9:00–9:30 a.m. ET.  Also live on the INDYCAR Radio Network (IRN) and www.indycar.com (timing & scoring + live analysis).

QUALIFYING BROADCAST:     Live on FS1, the IRN and www.indycar.com (timing & scoring + live analysis) from 2:30 – 4:00 p.m. ET Saturday.

RACE BROADCAST:     Live on FOX Sunday, March 2 from 12:00-2:30 p.m. ET. And also on IRN and Sirius XM 160.

TRACK LAYOUT:     1.8-mile, 14-turn street course
RACE LENGTH:     100 laps / 181 miles
2024 WINNER:     Pato O’Ward (elevated to P1 after Newgarden was DQ’d)
2024 POLESITTER:     Josef Newgarden (59.5714; 108.777 mph)

RLL’S TOP START / FINISH AT ST. PETE:     5th by Sato in 2018 / 2nd by Rahal in 2018; will be team’s 18th event here

RAHAL’S BEST START / FINISH IN ST. PETE:     1st in 2009 / 1st in 2008 – both with Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing; will be his 18th race here
RAHAL’S HIGHEST SERIES START / FINISH:     5 Poles – St. Pete (street) 2009, Kansas (oval) 2009, Detroit (street) 2017, IMS (road) 2023, Portland (road) 2023 / 6 Wins – St. Pete 2008, Fontana (oval; 500 miles) 2015, Mid-Ohio (road) 2015, Texas (oval) 2016; Detroit Race 1 (street) 2017, Detroit Race 2 2017

DEFRANCESCO’S BEST START / FINISH IN ST. PETE:     18th in 2022-23 / 22nd in 2022; will be his third INDYCAR start here
DEFRANCESCO’S HIGHEST SERIES START / FINISH:     5th at the IMS road course (August 2023) / 12th at WWTR (2022) and Detroit (2023)

FOSTER’S BEST START / FINISH IN ST. PETE:     ICS debut; highest INDY NXT start/finish here is pole in 2023 / 3rd in 2024
FOSTER’S BEST SERIES START / FINISH:     Series debut.

NEWS & NOTES:

RAHAL LETTERMAN LANIGAN RACING AT ST. PETE
The 2025 Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg will mark the 18th INDYCAR SERIES race for Rahal Letterman Lanigan (RLL) Racing in St. Petersburg. The team has entered the No. 15 Fifth Third Bank Honda for Graham Rahal, the No. 30 EVTEC Honda for Devlin DeFrancesco and the No. 45 Mi-Jack Honda for Louis Foster.The team led 11 laps with Takuma Sato in 2012 and four laps with Hunter-Reay in 2008 (G. Rahal won w/NHLR that year) and has earned eight top-10 finishes. The highest starting position by the team is fifth place by Takuma Sato and highest finish is second by Graham Rahal – both in 2018.

MAKING HISTORY IN ST. PETE – GRAHAM RAHAL
In 2025, Graham will make his 18th Indy car start at this track. His best start here is pole in 2009 and best finish is a win in 2008 in his INDYCAR SERIES debut – both history-making moments at the time as he became the youngest race winner in series history (2008), and youngest pole winner in series history (2009). Both records were eclipsed in 2019 by Colton Herta, but he held them for 10 and 11 years, respectively. Overall, he has earned one top five and seven top-10 starts here and has two top-five and seven top-10 finishes, including sixth place here in 2023. Year-by-year details are available upon request. Last year, he started 22nd and ran as high as seventh before a caution flag came out for rookie Linus Lundqvist, which negated his pit strategy to move forward and capitalize on what he felt was a fast race car. He ultimately finished 16th. Like many in the field, he only had one test day since last season but some internal team changes, including being paired with new team addition, Yves Touron, who will be his race engineer, and newly promoted chief mechanic, TJ Thompson, have him optimistic about the season.

“It’s been a long off season; I’m ready to go. There have been a ton of changes since last season. For me, having Yves (Touron; race engineer) and the whole team around us, that’s what I’m most excited about. I feel like there are a lot of things that have been done that have put us in the right direction and I hope we see the fruits of our labor.

“I thought the Sebring test was good and I thought we stuck to our plan and did well. Obviously, speed is one thing at Sebring, but I thought we needed to get methodically through a series of testing things that we wanted, and I thought we did a good job with that. All in all, it was a positive test. We’ll see, performance-wise, what we get from it at St. Pete, but I felt like we checked off a lot of boxes and that’s what we wanted.

DEFRANCESCO MAKES HIS INDYCAR RETURN
Devlin DeFrancesco, the 25-year-old Canadian-born driver of Italian descent, will make his return to the INDYCAR SERIES after a year away. Since last being in an INDYCAR in 2023, he has only tested one day at Sebring, but he ranked 11th overall on the combined report. He has made two INDYCAR SERIES starts in St. Pete (2022-2023) where he qualified 18th for both races and finished 22nd in 2022 and 25th in 2023. Prior to that he competed in two INDY NXT races in St. Pete in 2021. He qualified third for both Race 1 and Race 2 and finished 12th in Race 1 and fifth in Race 2. He is optimistic of a strong start in St. Pete.

“The Sebring test went well. I’m generally very, very happy with the results for the No. 30 EVTEC car. Everyone meshed well together. I think we left Sebring with a clear, concise idea of how were going to start St. Pete, what (set-up) package we liked and what trajectory we need to take and what path we need to go down on how to improve on my side as a driver and our side as a team. I think we are very much in the window, and I think we’re going to be quite strong when we get to St. Pete.
(On the hybrid engine:) “Generally the hybrid did everything I thought it would. The simulator prep I did with Ash (race engineer Ashley Higham) was really helpful. It was just an extra piece of the puzzle to worry about but generally I think it’s going to be quite a fun tool to use in terms of racing. It could spice things up a little bit in terms of where you are deploying it and where you are regenerating. It’s also a balance tool we can use to change the behavior of the car so a tool used correctly can be very, very helpful.

“I love St. Pete, love going there. It’s a great city with great fans and a great atmosphere. It’s a fun street course and a great way to start the year. It’s almost a road course-esque-type street course. It’s quite smooth, not quite as bumpy as some of the other ones we go to. It’s a perfect event to start the NTT INDYCAR SERIES season.”

INDYCAR DEBUT FOR INDY NXT CHAMPION FOSTER
2024 INDY NXT Champion, Louis Foster, 21, will make his NTT INDYCAR SERIES debut in St. Pete. Since being announced as a driver for the team, he tested at The Thermal Club and Laguna Seca in late 2024 as well as the series open test in Sebring last week. It will be his fifth race in St. Pete and first as an INDYCAR driver. In INDY NXT, Foster started on pole in St. Pete in 2023 and finished 14th and started fourth and earned a third-place podium finish in 2024. Prior to that, he competed in the Indy Pro 2000 doubleheader here in 2022 with a third-place finish in Race 1 and a second-place finish in Race 2. He is looking forward to getting his rookie season started in St. Pete, a track where he has run well.

“After signing, I immediately got to work with getting to know everyone on the team and my engineer. We had two tests at the end of last year — one at Thermal and one at Laguna Seca — and they went really well. It had been a while since I was in a car, so I was just coming to grips with the Indy car and also learning the hybrid system as well. And then obviously we went to Sebring last week. It was a good test, a chance to get together with the team as a whole after the two rookie tests alone. Graham is obviously very experienced and has been helpful for me in my rookie year so far. It was time spent learning and understanding the job that I need to do and how it differs from how I’ve previously gone about my career. So far, it’s been great; I’ve enjoyed every moment and hopefully the efforts we’ve put in will be fruitful.
“It will be my fifth race there. I’ve had a mixed history there. In the four races, I have had two podiums and one pole, but I think we’ve always been quick there. We’ve always had a good car and I’ve always done a good job there, but it just didn’t always go our way there sometimes so I’m quite optimistic about the weekend. It’s definitely one of the circuits that I think I can do quite well at. There are some circuits I know I have struggled at in the past, but St. Pete is not one of those so I’m hoping we can go in and throw a few surprises to the rest of the grid.

“I love St. Pete. I’ve always loved the street circuits here in America. I never raced on street circuits before I came to America, but they are so much fun. I think they really get the best out of the good drivers. I think it’s similar almost to wet conditions in a way. In the dry, on a road course, anyone can be fast, I think, but either in the wet or specifically at street circuits, it takes a lot to be quick and to have the confidence and the lack of fear for the walls. I love St. Pete; it’s a great city to leave Indiana winter for a weekend. It’s nice and sunny with lots of event for the fans like ‘Party in the Park.’ It’s a really fun event for the fans. I can’t wait to get there.”