Graham Rahal, Christian Lundgaard and Jack Harvey qualified 24th, 27th and 28th, in their Honda-powered RLL cars. Come the race, Harvey and Lundgaard finished 18th and 19th, three laps down, while in the closing stages Rahal suffered a hard crash with Devlin DeFrancesco’s Andretti Autosport car, which had bounced off a wall, lost steering control and wandered slowly into his path. After launching off the back of DeFrancesco’s stricken machine, Rahal then suffered a further impact with the Turn 3 wall.
Said Harvey: “The #30 PeopleReady car is rolling back into the trailer with four wheels on it and that is about as much as we could've hoped for today, unfortunately. I was glad to see Graham get out of the car. I hate the luck that he has in Texas. It’s two times in a row him just being an innocent bystander in an accident. That sucks for him and the #15 car…
“What else can you say? We've got a lot of work to do before the Indy 500.”
“It was frustrating because we stopped early on the first stop and it went yellow and that was our race,” said Rahal. “Actually, at the end there we were pretty competitive, I think, with a lot of guys. We weren’t as fast as Josef [Newgarden] or Pato [O'Ward] and those guys, but we were competitive enough with Ericsson and guys that are easily running in the Top 10. Unfortunately, our car setup was so bad the first two stints that it just took way too long for us to adjust and have the car come to us.
“I’m just upset to come out of here this way. Derek [Davidson, strategist] had just finished on the radio saying, "Get out of here in one piece," and that was the objective. Then you have a guy slide right up the track in front of you. There's nothing I could do. I had a guy to my inside. What do I do? So I’m really frustrated.”
Added series sophomore Lundgaard: “I think we should be glad that we at least got two cars home. What happened to Graham wasn't his fault. I think he was on a good run there so it's unfortunate.
“We were struggling way too much. The car was all over the place and just lacking grip in general. You don't know what the balance really is until it's too late.”
RLL have stayed on at TMS to test Katherine Legge – who will join the team in a fourth entry for the Indianapolis 500 next month – and reigning Indy Lights (now Indy NXT) champion Linus Lundqvist who is currently without a ride.
