Yahoo Autos 2024 IndyCar form guide: Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
RAHAL LETTERMAN LANIGAN RACING
No. 15 Honda: Graham Rahal (15th in 2023 championship)
No. 30 Honda: Pietro Fittipaldi (did not compete)
No. 45 Honda: Christian Lundgaard (8th in 2023 championship)
How soon is now
The chronicles of RLL in 2023 are well known: Stumbled hard out of the gates; miserable Indy 500 where Graham Rahal failed to qualify; hardcore rebound that delivered Christian Lundgaard’s first IndyCar win and an impressive close to the season across all three cars — including Juri Vips, the late replacement for Jack Harvey — which gave rise to optimism for how the team might launch its 2024 campaign.
It’s overstating the obvious, but Bobby Rahal’s head would explode if the new season starts like the last. For all of the additional money invested by RLL’s owners and sponsors to hire more people and pursue more speed, this truly is the one team in the series that needs to make an immediate impact for its own sake.
The good news is that based on what they’ve done during the offseason, the investments should pay off.
Smart change
Veteran RLL mechanic-turned-team manager Ricardo Nault had the look last season of a man who hadn’t slept for a year, and it was for a good reason: He was leading the team’s IndyCar and IMSA GTP programs at the same time, which added up to an ugly amount of travel and routine exhaustion.
Although he will be missed in the IndyCar paddock, RLL has taken mercy on Rico and assigned him to manage its factory BMW GTP effort alone, and elevated driver-turned-chief-mechanic Derek Davidson to the role of team manager for RLL’s IndyCar program. Davidson’s a wonderful choice for the position; he’s among the most humble and highly respected people within the organization. Rico leaves a big void, but Davidson will continue what Nault’s built, have the ability to only focus on IndyCar, and forge his own way of doing things that will benefit all involved.
Foyt swap
It’s not uncommon for IndyCar teams to hire personnel from each other’s programs, but it is rare when you get a swap of staff in the same exact roles. That’s the case with race engineer Michael Armbrester, who left RLL and the No. 30 Honda, to join A.J. Foyt Racing and engineer its second car, the No. 41 Chevy for Sting Ray Robb. In his place, Danielle Cucchiaroni, the former race engineer on Foyt’s second car (who moved to its primary car last season), has gone to RLL to…engineer the No. 30 for Fittipaldi.
Six years after his IndyCar debut, Pietro Fittipaldi finally has a full-time opportunity. Chris Owens/Penske Entertainment
Primetime Pietro
Pietro Fittipaldi’s IndyCar career has been a series of stops and starts. The 27-year-old from Florida is a veteran in one sense; he made his IndyCar debut in 2018, but since then, he’s completed just nine races in two partial seasons.
The fun-loving member of the famed Brazilian racing family has amassed plenty of top-tier sports car experience and even made two Formula 1 starts since he first appeared for Dale Coyne Racing, but the one thing Fittipaldi hasn’t had is a lot of consistent open-wheel races in the upper echelon of the sport. All of that changes with his first full-time drive in IndyCar with RLL. So what can we expect from Pietro? He’s been quick at times, but don’t mistake his age and deep racing experience for being ready to knock a Palou or Newgarden off of their thrones.
This is very much of a development year for Fittipaldi, who has the talent and the training to be an excellent IndyCar driver. Placing expectations on him to be that guy from the first race in a new team with a new race engineer would be unfair, but I don’t think it will take long for him to get in a groove and start delivering for RLL.
Second for Stefano
RLL’s new technical director Stefano Sordo, fresh from a lifetime spent in Formula 1, needed some time last season to acclimate himself to IndyCar’s spec car, oval racing, and a lot of new tracks. Towards the end of the year, RLL’s drivers were extremely complimentary of Sordo’s input to the team’s engineering group and its future direction, and the flattery continues as RLL is confident the Italian will have a much greater influence in all areas of performance.
Circling back to those big offseason investments, a lot of money went into hiring more engineers — Rahal says they nearly doubled the size of the department since 2023, and they’ve also brought in the excellent David Cripps as the head of oval R&D. A glaring weakness for RLL last year was its relatively small engineering team — compared to the huge engineering staffs elsewhere in the paddock — and that has largely been addressed.
On the clock
Christian Lundgaard is among the most coveted drivers in IndyCar, and with his RLL contract up at the end of the season, he’s another young charger who should draw plenty of interest if he chooses to leave.
It’s an interesting situation for the Dane to ponder. At any team that was above RLL in the standings, Lundgaard would be a powerful addition, but he wouldn’t become the No. 1 driver at a Arrow McLaren, Chip Ganassi Racing, or Team Penske, if they had vacancies to fill. At best, he’d be the No. 2, which wouldn’t be bad, but he’d be leaving an improving team where he’s established himself as the No. 1.
So that leaves it in the hands of RLL to make Lundgaard more competitive and give him a reason to stay. But we still have that question of whether it would be wiser to be the No. 1 at a team that’s on the move, but isn’t where it wants to be at the moment, or jump ship to a front-running team, and likely earn more money and win more races, but know that you’ll always fall behind a Pato O’Ward, Alex Palou or Josef Newgarden in the team’s eye.