INDIANAPOLIS — On Monday, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing announced that they have signed Pietro Fittipaldi to drive the No. 30 Dallara-Honda for the 2024 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season. With that announcement, many wondered what this meant for Juri Vips.

Vips came over to RLL to drive in the final two races of the 2023 season. He did a phenomenal job in doing so as well. But, with the time they spent on the 23-year-old Estonian in development, it was almost shocking to hear that he was being passed over for a full-time seat.

Vips came over and tested for the team last October at Sebring. That impressed the team enough to keep him around and to test again at Barber back in March. Vips liked it enough he stayed around the team and also performed static simulator testing for the team during the season as well.

With the team taking a chance on him, it didn’t make much sense to kick him to the curb already. Which is why they’re not actually.

Bobby Rahal on Monday shed some light on the process and not only mentioned that Vips isn’t going anywhere, but the fact that they’ve exercised their option on him for 2024 as well.

“We exercised our option with Juri (Vips),” Rahal said on Monday. “As I said before I don’t know when it was, several months ago, we see Juri as a long-term play as well.

“There’s one thing we did know, is we wanted to keep Juri in our family. He did a great job for us in Portland and fab job in Laguna. It’s a shame chaos caught him at the start. All in all, very impressed with Juri. We certainly wanted to keep him within our organization.”

With Bobby saying a deal is close to being announced to retain his son Graham in the 15 seat, there’s no room for Vips to run. Or is there?

“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.

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. With how that was evolving, they needed a third car. Unfortunately, that third ride has struggled in the last few years.

Hence the move for Vips to close out 2023 and Fittipaldi to take it over in 2024. But a fourth car?

“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.”