The main focus on this weekend’s NTT INDYCAR SERIES race on the streets of Nashville is certainly on the championship race between Alex Palou and Josef Newgarden. Palou maintained a healthy margin for his advantage despite Newgarden sweeping the pair of races in Iowa a couple of weeks ago.

Newgarden, the hometown native, is hopeful of a third consecutive win in Sunday’s Big Machine Music City Grand Prix (12 p.m. ET, NBC, INDYCAR Radio Network). However, a team that’s remarkably going to be flying under the radar is Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. Can they play spoiler again this weekend?

On the last street race, Christian Lundgaard not only won the pole for the Honda Indy Toronto, but he won the race a day later over Palou. Graham Rahal rallied from last to finish in the top 10 too.

It was a stark contrast to where they were a month prior on the streets of Detroit.

“I think we’ve found speed,” Rahal said ahead of this weekend’s race in Music City USA. “I think Toronto was a good culmination of opportunities for Christian (Lundgaard) and myself. “I don’t think we were the fastest cars on that given weekend but obviously everything in the race went well for Christian so I hope there are things that we can gain and learn from that, that we can take to Nashville.”

Rahal warns though that they can’t get too overly excited about a potential weekend like they had in Toronto, but they’re at least not far off either.

“I think we still have significant performance to find on street courses but hopefully we can carry some of the things over from Toronto,” Rahal continued. “Last year in Nashville, we were decently competitive so hopefully it will work out.”

The Ohio native has been solid here with a fifth in 2021 and a ninth place start last year. He just hopes the chaos doesn’t strike them.

“The Nashville race is just so unbelievably unpredictable; that’s what’s hard about it,” said Rahal. “It’s very difficult to have a smooth race as I learned last year with two accidents. It’s difficult to stay out of trouble; the back section of the track is so tight. It’s a wildcard of a race and I expect it to be crazy and interesting once again. Nashville is a huge market and it appears it’s going to be our season finale going forward. It’s a market INDYCAR racing must be in and it’s a huge opportunity for us as a sport so I hope we can keep building upon it.”

For Lundgaard, he just hopes to carry on this momentum through here and ahead for the rest of the season as well.

“Nashville is definitely going to be one of more fun weekends of the year,” he says. “We were competitive there last year and obviously coming off a win in Toronto, the previous street circuit, I think we can walk in with expectations to do well.

“We knew that Iowa (short oval) was going to be a struggle for us but we were obviously hoping for more with the momentum boost we were carrying. I’m obviously expecting to have a good result and carry the momentum forward for the rest of the championship. We’ve just got to execute.

“I think we’ll have a good package in Nashville, and we know we’ll have a good package at the Brickyard GP the following weekend and I’m obviously looking forward to that one.

” Overall, I’m pretty excited for the races in this last stretch of the season and will try to see if we can put the Hy-Vee team back on the top spot of the podium.”

Lundgaard arrives to Nashville for his second race here as the winner of the previous street race in Toronto on July 16. Last year, he earned his top starting position to date with third place and was passed by Palou on the start to run fourth.

He made his first stop from second place on Lap 23 under caution and ran in the top-10 for the next stint as there were some drivers on a different pit stop strategy. When Rahal and Veekay brought out the caution from Laps 52-55, many jumped in the pits and Lundgaard cycled into third place.

He ran his best lap of the race on Lap 60 of 80 from third place and took over second when Newgarden had to pit for fuel on Lap 66. He held second through one restart but dropped to third place on Lap 76 of 80 when McLaughlin passed him. A red flag came out for nearly 12 minutes when Grosjean crashed and on the restart on Lap 78 of 80, Lundgaard dropped from third to eighth place. 

For Jack Harvey, he is hoping the third time is the charm in Nashville after some competitive runs in Music City. Last year, he started 11th and took the checkered flag in ninth place but was given a post-race penalty for avoidable contact with Pagenaud and dropped one position. In the inaugural race in 2021, Harvey qualified sixth and finished 15th in an eventful race that saw an eight-car pileup and was later red-flagged and ultimately won by Ericsson, who brought out an early-race caution and had to go to the back of the field. After the team made gains on the street course setup in Toronto, Harvey is looking forward to earning a strong result in the final street race of the season.

“I’m looking forward to Nashville, it’s one of my favorite race events we go to,” said Harvey. “I absolutely love the city. Last year we had a pretty decent race amidst all of the chaos, which has been a bit of a theme there. Heading into the weekend, we’re just looking for a clean, smooth one. If we can execute those things, I definitely feel like we can go and be competitive and think our street course car has been quite good. Without the Toronto Lap 1 incident, I think we would have had a pretty great race there as well. I’m quite optimistic heading into the weekend but a smooth and sensible one is the best path we should take right now.”