Christian Lundgaard’s Win First Step In team’s ‘Indy Recovery Program’

As one of the leading supermarket chains in the Midwest, Hy-Vee understands the value of product placement.

Christian Lundgaard and Rahal Letterman Lanigan gave the company significant product placement as the No. 45 Hy-Vee IndyCar won the IndyCar race heading into this weekend’s Hy-Vee IndyCar Race Weekend at Iowa Speedway.

The 21-year-old Lundgaard’s first victory in the NTT IndyCar Series was a dominating performance in Sunday’s Honda Indy Toronto on the streets of Exhibition Place. Lundgaard drove the No. 45 Hy-Vee Honda to an 11.7893-second win over IndyCar Series points leader Alex Palou’s No. 10 Honda.

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Lundgaard started on the pole and led 54 laps, including the final 23 laps.

More importantly, Lundgaard’s victory was a major step in what team owner Bobby Rahal called the team’s “Indy Recovery Plan.”

It was devised after the team’s terrible experience during the Month of May at this year’s 107^th Indianapolis 500. All three of its full-time drivers had to compete in “Last Chance Qualifying” for the Indy 500 including Lundgaard, Graham Rahal, and Jack Harvey.

In the end, with Graham Rahal on the bubble, Harvey bumped his teammate out of the 33-car starting lineup as time ran out in the session.

Rahal would ultimately compete in the Indy 500, but as a replacement driver for the injured Stefan Wilson at Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, instead of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.

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Team owner and 1986 Indianapolis 500 winning driver Bobby Rahal revealed after Lundgaard’s win at Toronto on Sunday that he was so distraught, it actually took a toll on his health.

“After Indy, the month of May took — I’m 70 years old, and the month of May took a real toll on me,” Rahal said Sunday. “I wasn’t sleeping well at night. We’re here to win. We’re not here to fricking play around or to be part of it. We’re here to win.

“I’m telling you; it was bad. So much so that I thought my physical health had been — you know, a year ago in June I had open heart surgery. This May, I mean, it knocked me back a few steps because I’m not here just to show up. I’m here to win.

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“All the effort this young man (Lundgaard) and Graham and Jack and our team, everybody is working their butt off, and it haunted me. It pained me.

“That’s why I just said right after Indy, I said, we’re going to create and instill and initiate the ‘Indy Recovery Plan,’ which we’re in the process of doing.”

According to Rahal, it’s about determining why the team performed so poorly at the state of this season and fixing the issues “so that next May we’re fighting for the pole,” he said. “That’s our goal.

“I’ve got great people to help me do that: Steve Eriksen (Rahal Letterman Lanigan Chief Operation Officer), Stefano Sordo (RLL Technical Director), Ricardo Nault (RLL Team Manager),” Rahal continued. “Anyway, May was Hell for me. That’s why we made the decisions that we made, and they weren’t easy. I think we’re getting the results of those, but I don’t take any confidence that we’re there yet.”

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Rahal is one of the owners of Rahal Letterman Lanigan. Racing along with television and comedy icon David Letterman and Southside Suburban Chicago industrialist Michael Lanigan.

Lundgaard’s victory was the 30^th for Rahal as a team owner, but its first since Takuma Sato won the Indianapolis 500 on August 23, 2020.

It was also the first on a street circuit since Graham Rahal swept both races of a doubleheader at Detroit’s Belle Isle in 2017.

“First, I’m so pleased for Christian,” Rahal said. “He did a fantastic job all weekend and last two weeks ago and did a fantastic job.

“I think that I just see him going from strength to strength.

“When I raced, I never felt confident about anything, and if I won a race, later that night I would say: ‘Okay, that was then. Now what are we going to do next weekend?’ I always ran scared, frankly, as a driver.

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“I still do as an owner.”

That running scared attitude created dramatic change within the team and gave Rahal Letterman Lanigan a chance to experience the heights of victory after dealing with the valley of despair from the Indianapolis 500.

“This weekend was a fantastic weekend,” Rahal said. “We didn’t unload great. We unloaded okay, but we had to work at it.

“The thing I’m most proud of is that the team… Christian, Graham, Jack… every session I would sit in the engineering meetings after the sessions, and they were — the issues each of them were having, they were sharing happily to try to find an answer for it.

“I think as you saw over the course of the weekend we kept getting better, better, and better. I think today of the highlight with Christian really, I think it’s fair to say, dominating the race. Now we have to do that next weekend; right?”

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The ”next weekend” is a big one for Rahal and one of the team’s major sponsors. It’s the biggest IndyCar Series race weekend of the summer, the Hy-Vee IndyCar Race Weekend at Iowa Speedway. It has turned the small town of Newton, Iowa into an entertainment destination for next weekend.

It includes two races on the 0.875-mile Iowa Speedway oval and four of the biggest names in entertainment performing before and after each race.

American Idol winner and multi-media superstar Carrie Underwood will kick off the Hy-Vee IndyCar Race Weekend with a performance prior to the Hy-Vee Homefront 250 presented by Instacart on Saturday, July 22. Country music icon and six-time Grammy Award nominee Kenny Chesney will perform following the race.

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The action continues the following day with another full IndyCar Series race, the Hy-Vee One Step 250 presented by Gatorade. Three-time Grammy Award winner and country music power group Zac Brown Band will perform prior to the race on Sunday, July 23.

British singer-songwriter and global chart-topping artist Ed Sheeran will wrap up Hy-Vee IndyCar Race Weekend with a performance following Sunday’s IndyCar race.

“For Hy-Vee, who have stood with us through thick and thin to win this race, I mean, they’re the biggest fans we have, frankly,” Rahal said. “My phone is blowing up with people from Hy-Vee.

“’Oh, that’s great.’

“Now, they are going to expect that next weekend.”

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Actually, it’s a doubleheader so that gives Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and Hy-Vee a chance to win two races in one weekend.

While the Hy-Vee IndyCar Race Weekend at Iowa is the next step for Rahal, Lundgaard’s victory at Toronto is a major step toward the team’s “Indy Recovery Program.”

It began when Rahal had to make some major changes at the team after the disastrous “Month of May” performance.

Like any owner of a business, that means keeping some employees, while turning lose others.

“Making changes is difficult because it’s obviously affecting people’s lives, and that’s not fun,” Rahal said. “When everybody says, ‘Oh, it must be great to be a president of the company.’

“Yeah, it’s great until the minute you have to let somebody go, and then you feel like crap, whether they deserved it or not.

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“Just things weren’t just working. I think that we felt we just had to — you know what they say about the definition — what is it the definition of insanity is keep doing the same thing time and time again and expecting a different result. I just felt that we were at that point.

“We needed to give some people some opportunities that they maybe had been wanting for a while and hadn’t been given that opportunity. I think that contributed to this turnaround of sorts.

“Again, again, it’s no fun making those kinds of decisions. I mean, it’s no fun at all, but we have to. We’re a company. We represent great companies. We have great people within our team, and we have an obligation to those groups, to the people within our team, and to our sponsors.

“So, you have to do what you have to do.”

It was IndyCar’s only trip outside of the United States that helped lead the team to brighter days.

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“Here we are in the front row on pole, and I kind of think our guys — we haven’t been there very often, so I’m not sure we thought we knew what to do when you are up there,” Rahal said, referring to Lundgaard’s NTT P1 Award as the fastest qualifier on Saturday.

“We do now,” Lundgaard said.

“We do now,” Rahal concluded.

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