Graham Rahal in for a "wild" race at St. Petersburg after a disappointing qualifying

IndyCar driver Graham Rahal had a disappointing qualifying session at the first race of the 2025 season during the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. The Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver was eliminated in the first session and was over two-tenths slower than the cut-off time.

Rahal has now come out and detailed his disappointing qualifying run in a tweet uploaded by him on the social media platform X on March 1, 2025. However, the 36-year-old looks forward to a “wild” race and fighting for position as he makes his way up the grid. The tweet read,

“Not the result we were working for in qualifying but seems like this race is going to be a wild one! We’ll get locked in over night and be ready for a fight tomorrow!”

Graham Rahal qualified in Group 1 during the first qualifying session based on the finishing position from the final practice session. The RLL driver was in a tough group with many top drivers in it. Will Power and Pato O'Ward were the other shocking names who failed to qualify for the second session from Group 1.

The practice runs for Rahal weren't particularly strong either, as the American finished outside the Top 10 in both the practice sessions. Graham will start the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg outside the Top 20 in P21. His teammates Devlin DeFrancesco and Louis Foster will start the race outside the Top 10 as they qualified P14 and P16, respectively.

Meanwhile, Team Penske's Scott McLaughlin took the pole position for the St. Pete GP with a lap time of 59.4624. Andretti Global’s Colton Herta will start alongside McLaughlin on the grid as he qualified P2 and Felix Rosenqvist in the #60 Meyer Shank Racing rounds off the Top 3 from the qualifying.

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Graham Rahal and Co. “still learning” how to effectively use the hybrid system

Graham Rahal spoke with the media ahead of the 2025 Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Bob Pockrass shared a video of the same on the social media platform X, as Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing's driver detailed how the hybrid system and the push to pass will be effective around the St. Pete circuit and how he's still trying to optimize the use of the system.

“The hybrid is very impactful at low RPMs. So if you are kind of out of the power range of a gear or something, you press it, you can feel it's quite effective, but it really tails off. So like down the straight away, it just stops. There is no effect. Push to pass keeps pulling you into the break zone. So to me, they are both effective but in two very different ways,” Graham Rahal said.

“We are still learning in the effects of how this thing works. How to get the battery (charged),” he added.

The hybrid power unit was introduced by IndyCar midway through the 2024 IndyCar season, and it increased the operational costs of the team from $6-8M to $10M for a full season.