Sunday Morning Update from Mid-Ohio

Rahal wants to win for hometown crowd

Good morning from Lexington, Ohio and the rolling hills of Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The temperatures are not as cool this morning as yesterday but the 61 degrees feel nice. We should not get over 80 degrees for the 3:42 pm start of the IndyCar race.

It was mentioned in our Overheard at Mid-Ohio Saturday report that there is no morning warm up today. It was decided by the series to eliminate this on the permanent road courses because teams can test at this track. Not sure what they were thinking but we will have had five races from three different series on track between qualifying and the race today.

Will Power, the 2018 Indianapolis 500 winner, had an interesting comment about closing the pits under a yellow during a road or street course race yesterday after he qualified second.

"IndyCar has done such a great job with everything. The new car is great. The way the series is run, the parity, the competition. But they hose the driver who could win the race when the pits close under yellow. Every weekend on road and street courses, that's an issue. They have the technology to fix that. I hope they do that next year."

A disappointed Graham Rahal, an Ohio native who drives the FifthThird Bank sponsored entry for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, did not have the qualifying results he thought he should have after James Hinchcliffe ventured off course in turn 12 and caused a red flag in the second qualifying session of the Firestone Fast Six.

"In the second round, the balance was pretty good. Clearly, I'm disappointed that it turned out the way that it did because I know that we had the speed to advance to Round 3 (Firestone Fast Six). The Fifth Third Bank car felt really good once I got some temperature in the tires in Turns 5 and 6.

"I thought 'OK, we've got a good shot at this thing.' The next thing I know, the red flag is out. I'm very frustrated. We're just going to have to work our way to the front from seventh. A lot can happen in a short period of time, so we're going to have to work our way through it."

Lucille Dust reporting live from Mid-Ohio