Schumacher encouraged by Road America pace as Rahal calls car 'diabolical'

One Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver was pleased to be fast for the first time on a road course, and the other was “baffled” by the absence of speed that surrounded his car.

“It was a good session,” Schumacher said after claiming eighth in the No. 47 RLL Honda. “It was nice to actually have a session that ran all the way through. and not interrupted by groups. I think we did a decent job of understanding what direction we wanted to go in with the setup, and I felt like we found a pretty happy medium. Now we’ve just got to analyze what we found today and hopefully make it better for tomorrow.”

RLL was one of a handful of teams to recently test at Road America — site of this weekend’s XPEL Grand Prix — and the chance to learn the sweeping road course in person was invaluable to the rookie, whose pre-event preparations have been mostly reserved for simulator session.

“It was great,” Schumacher added. “Obviously, a lot of these tracks I am seeing for the first time, so having had the opportunity to come and test here just accelerates the whole process of getting into the weekend. These weekends are not super long, and you’ve got to make every second count that you're out there, and then I'm sure we did that, especially now that we got the chance to test here last week, we just made sure that we got the best out of it.”

Rahal in the No. 15 RLL Honda was a full 1.5s adrift from Schumacher in 22nd.

“The car was diabolical, and I just don't get it,” Rahal said. “I'm so confused. Even at the test, we tried so much and yet for the most part, the car just feels the same. It just doesn't get any better. I'm a little baffled, but we’ll try some more things tomorrow, I guess to see if we can get it to come to life.”