Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
104th Running of the Indianapolis 500
NTT INDYCAR SERIES
OPENING DAY NOTES/QUOTES – August 12, 2020
SATO, RAHAL AND PIGOT HAVE A PRODUCTIVE OPENING DAY AT INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY IN PREPARATION FOR THE INDY 500
1) James Hinchcliffe 224.526 mph
13) Takuma Sato 221.551 mph
25) Graham Rahal 221.498 mph
26) Spencer Pigot 221.492 mph
GRAHAM RAHAL, No. 15 United Rentals Dallara / Honda / Firestone: “It’s the end of Day 1 here at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and I think it was a solid day for our team. I know that sometimes on the time sheets it doesn’t look like it though. I didn’t get the big tow, in the traffic on new tires, light fuel and all that sort of stuff. In fact our goal today was to use as little tires as possible. We ended up running two sets of tires almost two full stints per set so I’m pleased with that, pleased with the consistency of the car. Obviously we need to find a little bit of speed, find a little more grip in traffic and I think every driver here is saying that tonight. And if you saw us on track, its definitely quite a challenge for sure. We’re going to sit down with the engineers and try to work on not only the United Rentals car but also our teammates and hopefully we can get Takuma and Spencer a little more competitive as well. The team had a long list of things we wanted to get done and we got those done so now we can go forward from here.”
TAKUMA SATO, No. 30 Panasonic / PeopleReady Dallara / Honda / Firestone: “We’re back at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and it is a very happy time for us. This is a moment we waited for, for a long time. Its August but it is a fantastic feeling. We jumped in the car and went fast, not 230 mph yet because of the boost level today, but it’s a great feeling. We did a number of test items today, splitting over three cars because this year the schedule is compressed a lot. We literally have today and tomorrow for the race setup and then Friday is Fast Friday. There is still a lot of work to be done but we did a solo run and a group run and were relatively competitive so it was a very good day.”
SPENCER PIGOT, No. 45 Hy-Vee / Embrace Pittsburgh Dallara / Honda / Firestone: “Overall it’s good to be back at Indy. I think we’ve all waited a long time for this so it’s nice to be here. On track, things went pretty well in the first session. Its cool to be going those speeds again. I haven’t been on an oval since late August last year so it felt great to go over 220 mph again. The No. 45 Hy-Vee / Embrace Pittsburgh car looks great. I thought we made some good improvements and changes and the car was feeling pretty good. The afternoon was a little tougher for us. We tried some things on our list and, even if we don’t go that direction, it was good to get some reads and data on that. We definitely have a good idea of what we want from the car so hopefully tomorrow we can find it.”
ABOUT TAKUMA SATO’S CO-PRIMARY SPONSOR PEOPLEREADY
PeopleReady has been an associate sponsor on Takuma Sato’s No. 30 entry in 2020 and will be the co-primary sponsor for the Indy 500. PeopleReady, a TrueBlue company (NYSE:TBI), specializes in quick and reliable on-demand labor, as well as highly-skilled workers. PeopleReady supports a wide range of blue-collar industries, including construction, manufacturing and logistics, waste and recycling, and hospitality. Leveraging its game-changing JobStack platform, PeopleReady serves more than 130,000 businesses and puts more than 300,000 people to work each year, operating more than 600 branch offices across all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Canada. Learn more at www.peopleready.com.
NEXT UP: Practice will take place from 11 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. ET tomorrow. Get a behind-the-scenes look at preparations for the 104th Indianapolis 500 via the Digital Ally Garage Camera on www.rahal-staging.ktnlcqy7-liquidwebsites.com.