Rahal: “We need to have less failures this year.”

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SPEEDWAY, Ind. — Graham Rahal admitted that it’s an “obvious statement” to make ahead of the 2025 IndyCar season.

“We need to have less failures this year,” Rahal said. “You guys see the finishing position in points, but you go back and watch the tape, I’ll bet you at least the first half of the season, you would see our name and our number in the top 10 pretty much every race until something would go wrong.”

Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan has had a tumultuous last few seasons given their struggles qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 and in overall performance throughout the entirety of each season.

The team is also caught up in a federal investigation regarding the possible theft of intellectual property by a former engineer at Andretti Global who is now working for RLL.

On top of that, the team lost a huge primary sponsor in HyVee during this off-season.

It was disappointing. It was hard to lose HyVee, for the sport to lose HyVee,” said Rahal. “It was no reflection of us. We obviously thought everything was looking really good there. But new CEO, change of mindset, that was tough.”

All three of RLL’s full-time entries last season in Rahal, Christian Lundgaard, and a rotating cast of drivers in the #30-car, barely qualified for inside the Leader’s Circle. The 30-car, driven for a majority of the season by Pietro Fittipaldi, just squeaked into the Leader’s Circle in th 22nd and final spot, securing the team much-needed funding.

Rahal was 19th in that regard.

“We needed to maximize the events that we were strong in, improve significantly on the events that we weren’t, and try to put ourselves in a more consistent pattern at the front where if somebody stumbles or we’ve got the speed, whatever it may be, that we’re on the podium, that we get a win,” Rahal said.

RLL had just one podium appearance in 2024.

In looking for that maximization, RLL is turning to some young blood for reinvigoration. Rahal re-upped with the team this off-season as the veteran driver of the last twelve seasons. They are bringing in reigning Indy NXT Champion Louis Foster in the 45-car with the departure of Lundgaard to Arrow McLaren.

“To lose Christian was tough because I think we really felt that he was going to stay,” said Rahal. I understand what happened in the end, but the reality was that I think RLL had given him a great opportunity to come over here. I think we thought that he would hang with us, and he didn’t.”

Devlin DeFrancesco is back in an IndyCar ride as well with the team in the 30-car after having spent the last season unaffiliated having been let go by Andretti-Steinbrenner Autosport following the 2023 season.

Though the team is not struggling from a dollars and cents standpoint, Rahal says he understands his window for regaining sustained success with the team as a driver is closing.

“The reality is I’ve been reminded several times that I’m old, which I don’t think I am, but it’s come up a lot,” he said. “The reality is that my future runway is shorter than the past, so you need to start looking at where do we go from here. I’m going to be here a while, don’t get me wrong, but still, from a team mindset, we need to start to build the future guys, future stars that you’re going to see in the RLL cars for many years to come. So let’s see what happens here.”