Penske and Ganassi have been the most dominant teams on the season and arguably here too. They’ve won all five races on natural road courses in 2023 and have won the last 3 here too.

For podiums, Ganassi has 4, Penske and Andretti each have 3 while DCR and RLL both have 1. Penske and Ganassi swept the podium last year and had 2 of the 3 in the 2 races prior.

At Mid-Ohio, the podium read Ganassi-Ganassi-Penske. In Road America, it was Ganassi-Penske-McLaren.

Can anyone stop them on Sunday?

Maybe it’s the RLL camp.

Lundgaard qualified third last year but spun later while running in the top five. At Barber, he qualified sixth and finished there. At Road America he started 7th and finished there too. At Indy, he was on the pole and finished 4th then on the front row and finished fourth again last month with Mid-Ohio coming from 5th to finish 4th.

These types of tracks have been the best circuits for the Danish driver. In fact, take away the ovals, he’s third in points.

Lundgaard has scored the third most points (281) on road and street courses this season trailing only Alex Palou (398) and Scott Dixon (315).

On ovals?

See the difference?

It’s ovals that’s holding him back. Luckily, we don’t have any more on the schedule. The final two races are on natural road courses.

“I’m looking forward to returning to Portland,” Lundgaard said. “We were strong there last year; it was the three Penske’s and the 30 car there last year so I’m pretty sure we can be fast there again. We’ve proven our road course package is good and it’s obviously nice to have two of them (road course races) left in the season with Laguna Seca, which has been repaved. And I do believe our road course car is one of the best on the grid so we’ve got to make up for the mistakes that were made there last year. We didn’t get the result that, in my opinion, we deserved so that is the plan. Let’s get the Hy-Vee car on the top step of the podium.”

Rahal went from 10th to 5th the last two years. He qualified in Row 4 for the GMR Grand Prix and overcame being punted on Lap 1 for a top 10 and qualified on the front row in Mid-Ohio and finished seventh. He was also on the pole and came home runner-up in last month’s Gallagher Grand Prix.

“Hopefully the setup that we’ve been working on with the road course package will translate well,” Rahal said. “I feel like we’ve proved it so far. Last year at Portland we were competitive. Hopefully this time around we can qualify a little farther forward and give ourselves a little better shot on Sunday and get the PeopleReady Honda on the top spot of the podium.”

RLL has earned a total of four podium finishes here (3rd – B. Rahal 1995, Herta 1998) and has led a total of 151 laps (1998: Herta, 20; 2001 Papis, 69; 2018: Sato, 25; 2021: Rahal, 36). In addition, the team competed in the Toyota Atlantic races here in 2003 (Danica Patrick, Jon Fogerty) and 2004 (Patrick and Chris Festa).

Prior to 2023, the team prepared a total of 32 Indy car entries for drivers such as Bobby Rahal (1992-1998), Mike Groff (1993-94), Raul Boesel (1995), Bryan Herta (1996-99), Max Papis (1999-2001), Kenny Brack (2000-01), Jimmy Vasser (2002), Michel Jourdain (2002-2003), Graham Rahal (2018-19, 21-22), Takuma Sato (2018-19, 21), Oliver Askew (2021), Christian Lundgaard (2022) and Jack Harvey (2022). The No. 15 PeopleReady Honda entry for Graham Rahal, the No. 30 Kustom Entertainment Honda entry for Juri Vips and the No. 45 Hy-Vee Honda entry for Christian Lundgaard will bring that total to 38 in 2023.

It will be the eighth overall race for Graham Rahal at PIR and sixth in the main event.

In 2022, Rahal started 11th and finished fifth. He passed Newgarden for 10th on Lap 4 and held the position until the pit cycle started and moved up to the lead by Lap 22 before his first stop on Lap 23. He returned to run eighth and took over seventh when Ericsson was the last driver to pit on Lap 32. He passed Palou on Lap 43 for sixth and climbed into the lead by Lap 49 on the next pit cycle before making his second stop on Lap 50. Once everything shook out, he was running sixth and claimed fifth when teammate Lundgaard pit on Lap 78. He made his final stop on Lap 70 and ran seventh. He took over sixth place after a restart from contact between Johnson and Veekay and passed Newgarden again on Lap 91/110 for fifth place. For the final stretch, he attempted to pass O’Ward, whom he closed on to run -0.363 on the second to final lap but was unable to pass him and finished fifth.

In 2021, he earned his best start of the season at Portland with fifth place. He led two times for a total of 36 laps, which was the most for all drivers but the timing of a caution negated his pit strategy and he finished 10th.  After starting fifth, he moved to second place on the opening lap and avoided damage from contact that involved multiple cars. He took over the lead on Lap 29 when leader O’Ward pit for fuel and tires and held it until his first stop on Lap 35/110. He came back on track ahead of O’Ward by staying out longer and undercutting him. He reclaimed the lead on Lap 44 and was 2.6-second ahead of O’Ward. A caution on Lap 51 for Kellett, who stopped in Turn 1 and Ilott, who stopped in Turn 7, came out. This forced the team to adopt the same two-stop strategy that those who were involved in the opening lap contact and topped off were on, so he had to save fuel and ultimately finished 10th.

In 2019, he started 15th and misjudged the braking point into the first turn on the opening lap which resulted in a multi-car crash. His race car was placed outside the track and the team could not attempt to repair it and he retired in 23rd place.

In 2018, he started 10th and had gotten through Turns 1 and 2, which was expected to be action-packed at the start, and after getting through Turn 2, Veach squeezed Hinchcliffe and the two made contact which set off a multi-car crash that collected Hinchcliffe, Marco Andretti, Rahal, points-leader Dixon and his then teammate Ed Jones. Rahal’s car was too damaged to continue so it was towed back to the paddock and after more than one hour he returned to the track to complete a handful of laps to collect two championship points, which was the maximum possible. This move helped him at season’s end.

Prior to that, he competed in the 2007 Champ Car World Series race where he started eighth and finished ninth in his rookie season for Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing.  He started from pole in the Atlantic’s race here in 2006 but was hit by Simon Pagenaud on Lap 1 and finished 27th.  In 2005, he earned his first professional win at PIR in the Star Mazda race after starting fourth and winning by a margin of 0.0317 seconds. He’s looking forward to another chance to conquer the track in an Indy car.