Our second 2019 IndyCar Team Preview takes us to the team that won the penultimate race of the 2018 season. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing scored another victory but it was a trying year for the team. While it won a race and still had a driver finish in the top ten of the championship, the 2018 saw no great improvements from the year before. This came after the team expanded to a two-car operation, bringing Takuma Sato back into the fold and pairing him with Graham Rahal.
2018 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Review
Wins: 1 (Portland)
Poles: 0
Championshop Finishes: 8th (Graham Rahal), 12th (Takuma Sato)
2019 Drivers:
Graham Rahal - #15 United Rentals/Total Honda
The year started off on the wrong foot in qualifying for the St. Petersburg race. Rahal brought out a red flag and had to start 24th out of 24 cars. In the race, Rahal made plenty of passes and with the help of a few cautions found himself in the top ten. When Robert Wickens and Alexander Rossi made contact in turn one on the final restart, it allowed Rahal to slide into a second place finish. After a respectable ninth place finish at Phoenix, he started fifth at Long Beach and ran into the back of Simon Pagenaud at the start. This led to a penalty that shuffled him to the back of the field but with passes and cautions falling his way he was able to recover to a fifth place finish.
Rahal would score top ten finishes in each of the first six races and he was in the top five when he clipped the curb and ended up sailing into the barrier in the first Belle Isle race. He recovered to finish fifth the next day and at Texas he went from 20th on the grid to a sixth place finish. The momentum remains in his favor in the summer with a sixth at Road America and a seventh at Iowa. He had a hiccup at Toronto when he got caught in an accident and he had a good showing at his home race with a ninth at Mid-Ohio.
The season ended with a rough patch of results. He got into the rear of Spencer Pigot at the start at Pocono and dropped four laps down. Gateway was a mediocre night with a tenth place result. He had nowhere to go at the start of the Portland race and was one of four cars significantly damaged on that opening lap crash. His season ended with a battery failure at Sonoma.
Numbers to Remember:
1: Podium finish in 2018 after having six, four and three podium finishes in the previous three seasons respectively.
3: Finishes of 23rd in the 2018 season
6: Consecutive seasons completing over 2,000 laps. Only Simon Pagenaud has as many consecutive seasons with 2,000 laps completed.
58.82: Percentage of races Rahal finished on the lead lap in 2018, his lowest since 44.4444% in 2013.
Predictions/Goals:
Rahal's 2018 season was very similar to Simon Pagenaud's last year. It was a respectable season, he got good results and was toward the front of the pack in most of the races but looking back there wasn't a race that Rahal could have won and got away from him. His only podium finish at St. Petersburg came after being in the fortunate place of fourth position on a restart and Robert Wickens and Alexander Rossi getting together opened the door to slide into second. He didn't lead more than 12 laps in a race last year.
Where Rahal and the entire RLLR organization have to improve is qualifying. Rahal was behind from the green flag at most races. He started outside the top ten in nine of 17 races. He started outside the top fifteen in five of those races. The crazy thing is Rahal didn't stay at the back. His runner-up finish at St. Petersburg came from 24th on the grid. He went from 15th to 7th at Barber, 17th to ninth at the Grand Prix of Indianapolis, 30th to tenth in the Indianapolis 500 and 20th to sixth at Texas. His only top five starting position was fifth at Long Beach and he finished fifth.
The odd thing is his qualifying results improved towards the end of the year but the results took a step back. It didn't help he retired from the final two races, Portland after having nowhere to go in that first lap incident and his lost a battery at Sonoma, but there needs to be a better balance across the season. He had ten top ten finishes through the first eleven races. He had two top ten finishes and four finishes outside the top twenty in the final six races.
We know Rahal can be a championship contender and obviously he wants to get back to that level. It is a tough field and getting back to in touching distance of the top is an accomplished in itself.
Takuma Sato - #30 Panasonic/Mi-Jack Honda
Six years after his first stint with RLLR, Sato came in off his best season in his IndyCar tenure. His fifth place starting position at St. Petersburg was a promising start but unfortunately Sato was the one on the receiving end from a punt from behind and this came from Scott Dixon of all people. Sato managed to finish 12th. A few less than stellar days followed at Phoenix and Long Beach and better days were had at Barber and the Grand Prix of Indianapolis.
Sato's Indianapolis 500 defense ended early. Just over 100 miles into the race, Sato made contact with the slower car of James Davison. It was an accident where Sato had nowhere to go when he entered turn three. He bounced back with a fifth in the first Belle Isle race and the summer was kind of Sato. He scored top ten finishes at Texas, Road America and Iowa, the latter two were top five finishes and Iowa was a third place finish.
The next few races were a low point of the season. He made contact with the barrier at Toronto, was punted again while in the top ten, this time from Max Chilton at Mid-Ohio and he was caught in the early accident at Pocono. After ninth at Gateway, Sato played strategy into his favor at Portland and timing was on his side when he made his final stop moments before a caution came out and he got out ahead of Ryan Hunter-Reay. Hunter-Reay would pressure Sato down the stretch but Sato held on for the victory. Like his teammate, Sonoma was an early day to the showers when his engine expired after 15 laps.
Numbers to Remember:
3: The 2018 season was Sato's third season with two podium finishes. He has never had more than two podium finishes in one season.
4: Top five finishes in 2018, the same number as in 2017, and tying the most top five finishes he has had in a single season.
8: Sato has at least one top five finish in eight consecutive seasons. This will be his tenth season in IndyCar.
100: Races running at the finish out of 152 starts.
Predictions/Goals:
Every year we have to preview Takuma Sato and every year I write the same thing: We know who Takuma Sato is. And for a while that was because we knew Sato would tear up two or three cars a season and have races where he would start fourth and finish 17th because he ran into someone or spun off on his own or get the strategy wrong and fall like a rock.
But Takuma Sato has been different in the last few seasons. He isn't tearing up cars at the same rate. He had a few accidents last season but he had nowhere to go at Indianapolis when he made contact with James Davison and the same can be said for the Pocono accident. He is still quick. I just don't think Sato can be a title contender but he can be a solid driver and getting back into the top ten of the championship is not an unrealistic goal. The problem is there are about 16 drivers that could finish in the top ten of the championship so there is stiff competition.
While being known for his qualifying ability, 2018 was an off year for Sato but as I said before the entire RLLR organization was off in qualifying at every race. Sato started fifth in the season opener and didn't start better than seventh the rest of the season. Allen McDonald has joined RLLR and he has become famous putting cars on pole position for the Indianapolis 500 but one has to hope his touch will lift the cars up the starting order at the other 15 venue as well.
Sato could finish anywhere from eight to 16th in the championship and none of those results would be a surprise. It will all come down to whether Sato can qualify and stay at the front and if he can limit those bad days.
IndyCar has a hierarchy of the big three teams of Penske, Ganassi and Andretti and then everyone else is competing for fourth. Every year seems to be a rotation. At the start of the DW12-era, Schmidt Peterson Motorsports was in that fourth position with Simon Pagenaud then RLLR stepped up and Ed Carpenter Racing was there with Josef Newgarden. Last year, the top non-big three driver in the championship was Sébastien Bourdais of Dale Coyne Racing.
It has been a constant fight for fourth but none have been able to put up a consistent fight with the top three. This will be another season with the likes of RLLR, SPM, DCR and ECR trying to go toe-to-toe with the big boys while also having to fight with each other as well. It is a daunting task for those teams to overcome and makes it monumentally more difficult when it comes to making a championship push.
The 2019 NTT IndyCar Series season opens on Sunday March 10th with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. NBCSN's coverage will begin at 1:00 p.m. ET.
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