Christian Lundgaard said on Wednesday afternoon of this past week that he’s studied the books. When they roll off the truck with speed on the opening practice session on Friday’s, it almost always translates well over to some good success the rest of the weekend.

So, for a driver to spark the complete opposite by going from 17th in Friday’s to sixth in practice 18 hours later, then to a pole two hours after that and a win 48 hours later, it was a weekend that showed Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s resolve and improvement in all facets of the game.

He’d label it as “unexpected.”

“I think when I woke up this morning, I was just hoping we were going to make improvements from yesterday, from 17th,” Lundgaard said after scoring his second career pole on Saturday. “To end the day like this I didn’t quite expect, but RLL has just been smashing it, quite honestly.”

Lundgaard credited his better results this season than his teammates more so of his European background which allowed him to do things inside of the car that they couldn’t.

“I think, because I’m so young and I’ve driven a lot of cars in Europe that’s, in my opinion, quite difficult to drive and I’ve also driven some easy ones and just my experience with the F1 team back in a few years ago when I was doing a lot of simulator work, you’re just very involved and you drive a lot of different cars, a lot of different — I wouldn’t necessarily just call it setups, but the evolution of different cars, and you understand the differences and how you need to drive certain cars,” he said on Wednesday.

Well, as luck may have it, he had to put his money where his mouth was on Saturday afternoon on the 1.768 Ontario street circuit. He had strong enough pace to contend for the Fast Six in the dry, but in the wet, it was all up to him. Graham Rahal had a rough go of it and started last. Jack Harvey would roll off 19th.

Lundgaard advanced into the Fast Six and with ripe conditions working now in his favor, he delivered.

“When we grew up in mini-karts, in Denmark we don’t have wet tires, and as we all know, we develop our skills when we are in a very young age,” he said.

“I was driving around on the slicks in the wet, and I’ve just always been fast in the wets. Especially in go-karts. Yeah, I guess it comes from there.”

However, he also didn’t feel like despite a pole on Saturday, that he’d be able to hold his main competition off either in the 85-lap race on Sunday. He was on the pole because the quickest cars in Andretti struggled in the wet conditions. Plus, Alex Palou made some mistakes too. The better cars were coming from behind but they had the race pace to win.

“I do think we will be fast tomorrow. I just don’t think we’ll be the fastest car,” he said on Saturday afternoon. “I don’t think we’ve shown that pace throughout the weekend.

“I hope the improvements that we did make from practice 2 into qualifying and the changes that we made will pay off tomorrow.”

Boy did they ever. Lundgaard led the first 18 laps before pitting for the first time. Even when some pit on Lap 44 under the second caution, Lundgaard was one of several that didn’t. They did under the next caution.

That was the winning strategy.

Scott McLaughlin, Scott Dixon and Rinus VeeKay didn’t pit. Kyle Kirkwood, Colton Herta and Alex Palou lined up 4th-6th as they pit on Lap 44.

Lundgaard was seventh on the final restart.

Kirkwood dropped after his avoidable contact penalty, then Lundgaard casually got by Herta and Palou to be the top spot among those that didn’t need to pit.

VeeKay pit on Lap 59. McLaughlin bailed on Lap 61. Dixon then pit one lap later handing the lead to Lundgaard on Lap 62. He’d never look back in leading the final 24 laps en route to his first career NTT INDYCAR SERIES victory in his 28th start.

Alex Palou brought his bruised and battered car home runner-up in his No. 10 Dallara-Honda while Colton Herta, Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden rounded out the top five on the streets of Exhibition Place in Toronto in front of the biggest crowd here since 1999.

“I think it’s been coming,” Lundgaard said of his win. “If I’m going to be completely honest, I would have expected it to come in about three weeks when we got back to Indy.

“Having my first pole there, my first podium, it would have been great to have the first win as well, but it came today. I can’t thank the team enough because all the progression that we’ve been making throughout this year, we just struggled to be able to start the season good enough. We struggled on especially the super speedways.

“I don’t really know where we are in the standings now, but I’m sure we’ve moved up. That’s what I mean. We’re moving forward even though we don’t have the pace and performance on the super speedways. It just means that we’re doing pretty good elsewhere. I think we proved that today again.

“I know what I’m capable of, and I know what the team is capable of, and in looking at the three cars this year I would say I’ve been the faster car.

“I know that obviously Jack didn’t make it very far today, unfortunately. I’m glad he is okay. I don’t really know where Graham finished yet.

“Even this weekend I don’t think we had a fast enough car yesterday to be on pole in a completely clear qualifying. Graham would have been roughly around me then, and he is unlucky that his group was wet. He hit the wall twice, and he was out, and he had to start the race last.

“So we had a better car today, I believe. We made it work and finished it off.”

It was a perfect storm in the end in a sense that Palou suffered crash damage with Helio Castroneves and Kyle Kirkwood on Lap 45. He also needed to stretch fuel until the end too as he pit for his final time on Lap 44.

“Yeah, nothing I could do with Christian today, but part of it, it’s because of the starting position we had and the strategy we had to do that,” Palou admitted.

If he had qualified up front, like he typically does, it may have been a different story. But, when you’re nursing a battered car and trying to make it home in the end, you let Lundgaard go.

Palou’s gap to the lead was growing while his gap to his competition behind was dropping drastically. Herta made it to his rear wing. Will Power was behind Herta just biding his time. Even Marcus Ericsson was lurking.

If Palou let Herta by, he’d realistically fall back to fifth at best. If he pit, he’d likely fall down to 15th. So, he held on.

“At one point I thought we were going to finish behind Marcus,” Palou continued. “I saw it on the mirrors that it was Colton, Power, and Marcus; and I said, Oh, man, I’m not going to be able to make it.

“But I was concerned about fuel, which was the biggest problem for our strategy. I was concerned on tires because with the front wing I just couldn’t turn left. I was concerned by the wing. So I was a bit concerned about everything, to be honest.

“The right side started disappearing, and the left side started coming up, and I was, like, Oh, man, that’s not good.

“Yeah, it was really bad, honestly, and it was tough to drive because I didn’t really have the same grip to the right and to the left.

“Obviously it’s one of the most bumpiest tracks that we have on braking zones, on curves, and then turn ten it was the worst where I couldn’t do anything. I was just trying to go around, but I was losing quite a lot of grip compared to the following guy.

“As I said, glad that we made it with the front wing.”

Even with Palou’s damaged wing ahead, Herta said that his pace wasn’t all that bad and with having to still save fuel, he couldn’t fully catch him to get up one more spot on the rotunda.

“I did know, but honestly the pace he was going wasn’t bad at all, especially for the fuel number that we had to hit compared to a lot of the other guys,” he said.

“So I was kind of happy sitting and seeing what my tires were going to do because, remember, on the first stint of the blacks I dropped like a rock after, like, 25 laps. That was nine laps of yellow also.

“Then we had to do, what, like, 40 on the last stint. We pitted right around 39 or something like that. So I was, like, Oh, man, we’re just going to go back to 15th and have to pit again. So I was fine just sitting there.

“I tried to have some goes at him at the end of the race, but it was tough because I know every time I come out on to the straight and use that push-to-pass, I’m probably going to go up 6%, 7% of fuel mileage, and that’s going to destroy the race.

“Yeah, it’s tough when you are that car in the middle, and you have to try to attack but keep everybody else behind. So my main goal was trying to hold on to the podium, keep everybody behind before I was kind of looking ahead to him.”

That perfect storm led Lundgaard to a win here.

But, this win was coming due to adversity. The struggles on the Indy oval and in Detroit forced some internal changes at RLL.

To have 4 of the bottom 6 speeds in Indy which left one car home, Rahal was embarrassed.

“We weren’t fast enough and that’s what race is all about is being fast enough. What are you going to do? I feel bad for him. You know, I feel worse for the cars we gave our drivers and we’ve got to get our act in order,” Bobby told me after Indy 500 qualifying.

Then, the next time out in Detroit, they massively missed it. They finished 14-15-26.

“I struggled after Detroit just to understand what was going on because you put it on pole in the beginning of May,” said Christian Lundgaard. “We have the 500. We were absolute last. We got into Detroit, and we just can’t find our feet.”

It was at this point to where Bobby Rahal was reeling himself. Not just professionally as a boss, but personally too. This downward spiral was taking a toll on his mind and body. He was on the verge of another breakdown.

“You know, we came out of Indy really very, very disappointed and really kind of — it would have been hard — you would have been hard-pressed to believe we actually won the race two years earlier, and now we’re on the back row, and one guy didn’t make it in the race. At least in our car,” Rahal admitted.

“That kind of shook us to our core I think, but I have to say I think, frankly, the race that maybe had a bigger negative affect was Detroit because we were just — we were not good at all.

“After Indy, the month of May took — I’m 70 years old, and the month of May took a real toll on me.

“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.

“All the effort this young man 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, which is all about looking into why we performed so poorly and fixing those issues so that next May we’re fighting for the pole, and that’s our goal.

“I’ve got great people to help me do that: Steve Eriksen, Stefano Sordo, Ricardo Nault.

“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.

“That’s when we decided to make the changes that we made internally.”

Those changes have sparked a nice revival.

In Road America, they qualified 7-13-24 and finished 7-11-26. They had a week off to regroup before heading to their home race in Mid-Ohio.

Graham Rahal qualified on the front row. Lundgaard started fifth. Harvey was in 11th. Lundgaard led the way with a fourth-place run, even with two bad pit stops, Rahal still came away with a seventh-place result.

Rahal said that it was nice to see the looks on everyone’s faces again.

“More than me, I think it’s just for these guys, to see the smiles on the mechanics’ faces, those guys, they’ve never had an ounce of quit in them, and they could have for years. To see them excited is worth it,” he said.

In saying that, Rahal wasn’t too optimistic heading to Toronto. He felt like Detroit worried him in regards to pace for another street race this weekend.

It’s no secret that the street course program for RLL is lacking in comparison to the natural road courses. They finished 6-9-22 in St. Pete, 12-13-14 in Long Beach and 16-17-25 in Detroit.

Lundgaard never wavered in his approach. He was looking at the bigger picture. While yes, they were down on street courses, they were though better in most areas than last. He felt like a top four finish was something he was capable of.

Boy was he right.

“I think we’ve seen the results of that change,” Bobby Rahal admitted. “We’ve had great events since then. There’s I think a very good vibe within the team. Of course, today helps that immensely. Nothing like winning; right?

“I have to tell you it was emotional for me because of the hell that we went through in the last six weeks and to have a race like we had this weekend, and to see Graham going from 27th to 9th, I mean, Jesus.

“I feel so bad for Jack. The poor guy can’t get a break. For our sponsors, HUB, geesh, not even a lap. 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. My phone is blowing up with people from Hy-Vee. Oh, that’s great! Now they’re going to expect that next weekend.

“Yeah, I’m just very proud of the team, very proud of the working relationships we have within the team, whether it’s with Christian and Graham and Jack or the engineers or what have you.

“The response to the disappointment of Indy, and of course, maybe even the bigger disappointment of Detroit, really the response to that is due to their commitment to this organization and to themselves, each of them, and together.

“So yeah, I don’t want to be a pessimistic. I think we have a good chance next weekend to figure in the race. We have a reasonable test out there, but it’s like anything. I don’t think you can count anything for granted. I think you have to go in there and try to do your best every day and see what happens.”

Rahal said that even with this resurgence after making the internal changes that needed to be made, it’s not like he’s not struggling with them either.

“Well, making changes is difficult because it’s obviously affecting people’s lives, and that’s not fun,” he admitted. “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.

“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.

“Just different atmosphere. You know, again, it’s no fun making those kind 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.”

While RLL is hopeful of going on another second half of the season surge, Rahal won’t admit that they’re out of the woods just yet.

“I don’t think we’re out of the woods. If you look at earlier in the year, we were not too bad in St. Pete. Graham finished 6th I think it was,” he said.

“Now, maybe it might have been some attrition ahead of him to get to 6th, but nevertheless, P6, so okay. Long Beach, we were average, at best. Barber, we were not too bad. Indy Grand Prix, pole sitter, so not too bad.

“Now, we didn’t win. We ended up 4th because to some degree I think we didn’t know. Here we are in the front role 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.

“Yeah. So on road courses, not too bad. Although, as I say, Detroit really — that bothered me more than Indy because we should have been — I mean, we won Detroit several years ago, the two races. We won that race. Then to go back there and be so out of it, that just really bothered me.

“So, anyway, you have to make changes that you think are right, and thankfully we’ve had some good results since then, but we’ve got to keep doing what we’re doing. You just can’t rest on our laurels. We have to keep pushing.”

Lundgaard just wanted to get a win before seasons end, now, the sights have to be set on multiple wins.

Lundgaard feels like the momentum is there still and that most of these tracks at the end of the schedule are perfect places to finish even further up than they did a year ago.

“Honestly, right now obviously we’re optimistic, leaving Mid-Ohio,” he told me. “I think last year the best car qualified 13th, which was just not transferring from the first qualifying group. This year we had two cars in the Fast Six and one on the Front Row and me in 5th, and we had Jack up in 11th as well.

“Just looking at that specific race from last year to this year, we moved a lot, and we really struggled at Mid-Ohio last year. Now we’re coming into a track where we didn’t necessarily struggle as much, but we built a good foundation for Nashville at Toronto last year, and we were very competitive at Nashville.

“So coming in here, I do think, just looking at that, that it is sort of a turning point, at least I hope so. We want to continue building on what we’re building on now and basically don’t really leave those performances.”

RLL was able to pick up test days recently in Sebring and at Iowa too. It was the Sebring test a year ago for which propelled them forward. Does the Iowa one this year do the same?

In 2022, in the same street races preceding Toronto, RLL finished 7-11-13 in St. Pete, 7-15-18 in Long Beach and 14-15-26 in Belle Isle. They went to work at Sebring in the middle of the summer to help them learn for Toronto and Nashville.

It paid off.

RLL went 4-8-19 in Toronto and 8-10-23 in Nashville.

Rahal went on a nice run to end the season last year with 5 top 10’s over the final 8 races including a pair of top five results. He had 4 top 10’s in the previous 9 with a best finish of 7th in that span.

Lundgaard also had 5 top 10 finishes in the same final 8 races including a pair of top five finishes too but one of those was a runner-up result on the Indy road course. That’s the same place he just earned a pole at a couple of months ago and remember, we go back next month. He had 2 top 10 finishes in the first 9 races.

3 of the final 4 races this season are on natural road courses which are their strengths. If they’re stronger on these tracks this year compared to last and can get momentum rolling further and further, watch out.

This could be a sleeper team to watch the rest of the way.

“Luckily, we have another Indy GP later this year, in August, and we’ve been competitive there. I had my first podium, had my first pole there, so I might as well get my first win at the speedway,” Lundgaard said on Wednesday. “I really do think that we have that opportunity at that race. We just need to nail it during that weekend.

“Again, there might be other opportunities. We know we’ll be strong at the two road courses at the end of the year, and I do think we’ll be strong at Nashville as well. We just need to figure Iowa and St. Louis out, and I think we can at least finish around sixth or seventh in the championship if we really do things well.

“I’m definitely hoping for a podium, definitely hoping for a win. We’ve come close a couple of times this year. So I’m definitely hoping we get to that.”

Lundgaard feels the comfort in the series now too.

“I’d say I was pretty much comfortable as soon as I basically — I mean, last year we saw certain tracks where it took me a while to just figure stuff out, but I would say this year we’ve been fast in pretty much all Practice 1 sessions,” he noted to me.

“To me that just indicates I’ve been to all these tracks now. I’m comfortable in the team. I’m comfortable in the series. I’m comfortable in the car. I didn’t really need to go out early in the session just to run laps. We’re actually going out straight away with our run plan and not having to deal with all the trying to figure stuff out.

“I guess to really answer your question, I’m very comfortable in the car. I know exactly what I need, exactly what I want, and that’s where the three drivers come in, where it’s tougher for a team to fix and get a car that fits three different driving styles.”