IndyCar News: FBI conducts investigation at Rahal Letterman Lanigan

The FBI raided the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing shop (pictured) in Zionsville, Indiana on Wednesday.

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The FBI instructed employees to leave their computers and other electronic devices such as smartphones, gather their belongings and go home.

The rumored allegation is that a former Andretti Global engineer left the team and went to work for RLL and took intellectual property (team secrets) from Andretti to RLL.

“We are cooperating fully with investigators,” said the team in a statement issued on Wednesday evening. “Given that this is an ongoing investigation, we are limited in what information we can share right now, but we intend to provide additional information as soon as we can.”

Zionsville Mayor John Stehr confirmed to the Indiana Business Journal that the FBI “requested assistance” from the department.

“The FBI called our Police Department and said, ‘We’re going to do a raid in this building. Can you send some cars?’ Which we did,” Stehr told the Indiana Business Journal. “But they did not give us any information on what the nature of the raid was.”

The FBI arrived at the RLL shop at 8:30 a.m.

Andretti COO Rob Edwards offered a ‘no comment’ when asked by RACER about the development. RACER also reported that the FBI visited the Andretti building in August over the same case.

While we do not know any other details, this could be a case of one engineer stealing info from the Andretti team, but it could involve more people in the RLL organization if they knowingly also used the stolen data.

Then again, the FBI may find nothing, and there were no wrongdoings. A fishing trip when all they caught was seaweed.