Rahal says one-car teams can't catch up on race weekends

For the last two years at Barber Motorsports Park, the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing-Honda driver has finished as runner-up, but today finished at the bottom of his Q1 group in qualifying, and will start last.

Afterward he commented: “We have to unload competitive right away because we don't have a second car to split the workload and try different setups, spring rates or anything. For us as a single-car team, it's impossible to catch up over a race weekend.

“We've always been good here. We want to win races and get the PennGrade car in Victory Lane."

Rahal, like several other drivers, said he was struggling for grip, and that his Top 10 time from this morning had been the result of an extreme one-off effort.

“We're all sliding around, it's just the level at which you are doing that,” he said. “We can't seem to get the tire to bite the road at all. I had nothing else for qualifying.

“This morning I put in one miracle lap but couldn't get within half of a second of it again. That's what we have been banking on in qualifying.

“It got us through once in St. Pete and got us into the Firestone Fast Six in Long Beach but we weren't able to do that today.”

Rahal will have Oriol Servia as a teammate for the Indianapolis 500 and the Detroit double-header, and a source within the RLLR squad told Motorsport.com this weekend that he is optimistic the Indy car veteran will make other “one-off” races alongside Rahal this summer.