INDIANAPOLIS — Christian Lundgaard signed a multi-year extension to remain with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing last year. Pietro Fittipaldi was announced on Monday as the driver of the No. 30 Dallara-Honda for RLL on a multi-year contract beginning for the 2024 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season.

“No, we see this as a multi-year deal, and happy to do so frankly,” Rahal said of Fittipaldi’s contract.

With Juri Vips having a strong showing at the end of last season plus the team spending a lot of time in his development to keep him around, does that push Graham Rahal out?

He admitted he was a free agent but he also told me this past May that while he could technically look elsewhere, he didn’t necessarily want to.

Bobby Rahal put any uncertainty to rest on Monday in saying that not only did they exercise their option on Vips to stay in some capacity next season, but they’re close to announcing a deal for Graham as well.

“We’re okay. We’re okay. I think we have an agreement,” Bobby said of a future plan for Graham. “Everybody’s happy with that. Yeah, I mean, when you look at the kind of year he had last year, as did Christian, as Pietro said, four pole positions, Graham with within an eyelash of a fifth if you look at Mid-Ohio, that’s the kind of competitive level that we all want. He wants that, and we do, too, just as Christian and Pietro want.

“I think we’ve got a good lineup, very good lineup, of drivers for whatever the circuit may be, ovals, road courses or street courses. I’m excited about the new year.”

So where does that leave Vips? Rahal said that the goal is to add a fourth car.

“We’d like to run a fourth car,” Rahal admitted. “We’re not making as much progress on that as we would like. That’s certainly a hope. Maybe it’s only a selected number of races, maybe one, maybe it’s none. We’re not quite sure.”

Which shows their commitment to Vips. Even without anything guaranteed, they’re making plans on keeping him in something.

“I mean, Juri is a good young man. I have to say he did everything we asked him to do,” said Rahal. “I think he showed that he certainly is capable of running up front in an INDYCAR race.

“As I say, he’s a good young man. I’ve gotten to know Juri since he’s been with us. That’s why we wanted to make sure we kept him because we do want to run a fourth car, if at all possible. He certainly showed he belongs.

“In the meantime on top of that, if we can help him get something when we’re not using him, when we’re not busy with him, why not? I know I introduced him to a few of the P2 guys in Road Atlanta, just doing what we can to help him.

“Clearly we want to keep him because he’s a very, very good race car driver. He’ll still perform work for us. When you look at the new category with the hybrid, both Juri, Christian and Pietro have a lot of time in simulators and what have you learning, understanding this new world. I think that’s going to really help us get up to speed as a team that much more quickly just because we have that kind of previous experience.

“Between all of them, of course Graham also doing what he can, I think we got four chargers that can help take this team, as Pietro was saying, forward.”

RLL is also hopeful of building a future super team now. Fittipaldi will only be 28 next June. Vips is only 23. Christian Lundgaard is just 22. But in order to do so, you have to take this next step lightly.

Rahal has always told me that you can’t add a car just to add one. That’s why they maximized what they could out of Graham’s No. 15 Dallara-Honda until being a single car outfit was exhausted in what they could do.

Rahal became a title contender with the team, but they were finding out that he couldn’t do it alone. They had no team car for practice setups. Rahal had to do all the data in practice and testing. It was a one man show. With battling the bigger organizations with tons of resources, manpower and at least 2-3 teammates per team, RLL was quickly finding out that they had maximized their potential. They needed help.

With bringing in a second car, it would help not only Graham’s car, but the second ride as well. It would be in addition of the 15 car not a detriment of it.

For 2018, they brought in a full-time car to help. Takuma Sato thrived in it. The reason being is because Sato is a hell of a racer and that team was part-time the previous four years. They also added a third car for the 2018 season and hired another veteran in Oriol Servia.

They did the same a year later. They stayed that way through last season as a three-car team, except in 2022, that third car became full-time. Unfortunately, that third ride has struggled in the last few years too.

Hence the move for Vips to close out 2023 and Fittipaldi to take it over in 2024. But a fourth car? They ran one for the first time ever for Katherine Legge in this past year’s Indy 500. But the team largely struggled that Month for which Rahal still isn’t over.

“Certainly we’re not going to rush right into a fourth car for the reasons you mentioned,” Rahal told me. “You’ve got to be prepared to do that, to do it correctly, to do it so that fourth car actually contributes going forward.”

Rahal said that while the team overall saw some improvements this past season, Indianapolis still haunts them and why they’re pushing forward the way that they are currently.

“I think we certainly saw some improvements last year. Obviously our poor performance in Indianapolis still is by far outweighing every other thing we did last year,” he told me. “We’ve been committed to changing that for this coming here. I think we’re making progress on it already.

“The first thing, you’re right, we’ve got three, and we’ve got three strong drivers in those cars. The first goal is to have them consistently run up front. We do that before we do anything else.

“But I do like the drivers that we have in terms of the entire lineup with Juri, obviously with Pietro, Graham and Christian. I think that’s a pretty strong driver lineup. Ganassi is running five cars. Andretti has run four cars. So people are doing it. We just have to make sure we’re in the position to do it and do it well.”