Rahal: Fuel mileage not a concern for Honda

On Fast Friday, the quickest lap set by a Honda driver – Ryan Hunter-Reay of Andretti Autosport-Honda – without the aid of a tow from another driver was some 1.5mph faster than Will Power in the quickest of the Chevrolet runners.

Asked by Motorsport.com if there might be fuel mileage worries for HPD cars, Rahal replied: “With the Honda I personally haven't had the issues getting the economy. Even on the road course last weekend I didn't even need to pit when I did. I think I could have gone a handful of laps further than everybody else.

“So depending on how you drive it and everything else, obviously on the oval you're flat out a lot, but in the tow, you can do a lot of lifting and stuff. So I'm not so worried about fuel economy right now. My guys would have all those numbers and stuff, but it has not been a topic that we have discussed to this point.”

On the subject of whether, with frozen aerokits from 2016 to ’17, the Rahal Letterman Langian Racing team’s practice program had gotten simpler for him and his temporary teammate Oriol Servia, Rahal responded: “I’d say what simplified the program is that the engine is a bullet. I mean, the thing is fast, right? So that helps us a lot.

“The aero hasn't necessarily gotten simpler. In fact, I feel like every single day we kind of get new data, new reads. I mean, Oriol is running through one program with qualifying simulations and we're running through a different program trying to learn still.

“I don't think by any means we have this thing pegged. We're trying to learn as much as we can. We were fortunate to get a little bit of time in a wind tunnel not that long ago, which confirmed that what we did all last year here was completely wrong! But it also brings up a lot of other questions as to where we go and what we do.

“So it's nice that it's frozen. But for a team like us, we don't have the resources of some, so there is still a lot of learning and guessing to be done. But hopefully it will work out for us.”