Graham Rahal went 105 races without a pole. He’s now won 2 of the last 3. On Saturday, Rahal topped the Fast Six in going 58.3195-seconds en route to his fifth career NTT INDYCAR SERIES pole.

“I said to the guys this morning, the nice thing I had this morning with the car was very (indiscernible) too much of it, but it gave me something back,” Rahal said.

“Most of the year that wasn’t the case. You’d go pass and try to roll an extra mile-an-hour or two and the car simply couldn’t take it, and this time around it’s nice that it could and that it could and that it can.

“We had that at Indy. We’ve got that again here.

“I feel good about tomorrow. Well, I feel good about — look, I felt Portland and Laguna, both places we should be very solid, just knowing that the GP we made really good gains. It seems like our road course cars have turned a good corner here.

“You know, it’s just nice to make it happen, frankly. More than anything else, it’s nice to feel the expectation from within, to know that we should be there and that we can make it happen.

“That’s different than the last few years. People wonder about qualifying, but when you go into qualifying every single time knowing that you’ve got to drive an absolutely perfect, perfect lap to even advance out of your group, it’s very, very hard to do that.

“If you go into qualifying feeling confident and you don’t feel like you have to over-drive and you feel like you just put a good solid lap together and you’re going to be in the hunt, it’s nice to feel that again, and that’s kind of where we’re at right now.”

The last time Rahal won multiple poles in a season was in 2009 when he won poles twice that year. He’s now done so in 2023. Can he turn this one into a win in Sunday’s BITNILE.com Grand Prix of Portland (3 p.m. ET, NBC, INDYCAR Radio Network)?

The last 2 pole winners here won the race too.

“I think our race car is going to be better than our qualifying car,” Rahal noted. “I said that at Indy GP. I think we showed that, and I think here we’re in pretty good position.”

For the Indy road course, he had the race won but Scott Dixon did Scott Dixon things by making up from a first lap spin to winning on pit strategy.

If not for that, Rahal likely wins as he led 36 of 85 laps that day.

Now, he is in hopes of ending a 106-race drought and has a great shot of doing so. That’s as long as the tire strategy goes the way that he thinks and hopes that it will.

See, he elected to risk it in qualifying and run the Firestone primaries in the Fast Six. He was the only one to do so. It led to a pole.

“Obviously it was nice to run the blacks. I think Firestone has done a good job here,” he said. “The tire is very, very tricky though, the red and the black, frankly. There’s big deg. The peak is very, very early. I think reds after lap 2 are pretty well gone.

 “I think the reds are going to throw a lot of people for a twist tomorrow.

“This race has always been a red race, traditionally has, and I think we might see some different stuff this year, which is why we were keeping all those blacks, frankly, to be able to go into the race with.

“We’ll see what happens.”

As a result, he feels like this could be a Firestone primary race instead.

“The hotter the temp, I think it’s going to kill the reds,” said Rahal. “They saturate very quickly. I think they get very hot, and it creates further problems.

“But tomorrow is a cooler day, too, and if you’re up front, God bless we have a good start and we can do that.

“When you’re in that position, I think you can try to take care of them and maintain the reds a little bit better.

“Let’s see what we get, frankly. Let’s see what we get tomorrow, go racing, and hopefully have a good clean start and make those things last as long as we can.

“To do this in two, you’ve got to go, what, 35, 36 laps on your reds? That’s a lot to ask. I’ve already done it this weekend on blacks, so I know the blacks can do it and do it competitively, but it’s a lot to ask of the reds, I think.

“Most people won’t do it, too, to be clear, but if you tried.”

Last year, 5 of the top 6 starters elected to go with the reds on the first stint including each of the top 2 rows. The winning strategy was to pit on Lap 21 and go back to reds, then pit on Lap 49 for blacks and go to Lap 79 for the final set of reds.

13 of the bottom 14 starters each went with blacks to starts but everyone was on reds for the final stint.

What happens this time around? Rahal hopes this will be a blacks race.

“We really struggled with the reds yesterday,” said Rahal. “Really struggled with the reds. So a lot of what we had to do today was just to get the car to rotate for those specifically.

“But I think for this afternoon, we’ll just go back on them, and we should be okay.

“To be honest, it’s everywhere. I don’t think the tires are that different. I think the red is softer, but when — the reason I went to blacks was because on the very first outing, I was P1 and group 1 on the blacks, and I did like a 58.30 or something, so my red pace wasn’t much quicker it at all. That’s why at the end I just felt, hey, I don’t think I’m going to be able to do that again on reds, and so I went for the blacks.

” I think that the front tire gets really heat saturated and it gives up. It’s like 10, 11 — 10 you’re flying, 11, and then you get to 12 and the tire is just hot and it gives up and is pretty lazy.

“So to get it to rotate, you’re doing a lot of stuff that’s not very good for the race.

“Like I said, I think we’ve just got to go back on that a little bit.”

If Rahal can get past that first stint without any weird cautions, watch out. He had this race covered in 2021 but due to the opening lap crash, it benefitted those that pit early than it did on those that had the normal strategy.

“Yeah, in 2021 we led a lot of this race, but strategy — if you recall, the guys that were all running last won. Does this sound familiar to a couple weeks ago?” Rahal said.

“This place has done that. You look at where Takuma won from, 20th, a few years ago.

“I feel the level of the driver, the talent level has increased so much. We don’t get as many yellows anymore, and so hopefully tomorrow we can have a really clean start. We can control this race and make it pretty straightforward strategy.”