The 34-year-old Ohio native captured his second pole of the season in Saturday’s qualifying session and did so as the only driver in the Fast Six to remain on the harder primary, black sidewall tyre compound.
The softer alternate, red-labeled rubber was the option the rest of the group opted for and trailed in his wake.
The pace felt familiar for Rahal, who compared it to the Brickyard weekend on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course last month, when he qualified on pole, led the most laps and finished second after Scott Dixon triumphed on an alternate strategy.
“We had that [pace] at Indy,” Rahal said. “We've got that again here.
“I think our race car is going to be better than our qualifying car. I said that at Indy GP. I think we showed that, and I think here we're in a pretty good position.
“Obviously it was nice to run the blacks. I think Firestone has done a good job here. 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.
“But [in practice] we decided not to run as many sets as most guys. I think everybody in the field except for the RLL cars used two sets of tyres or some used two [in Friday practice], one [in Saturday practice]. We just used one per session, and we wanted to try to keep a set, and everything worked out today. Thank God for that.
“But we're excited and it would just feel good after all these years and close calls to win again.”
Source: Autosport