Photo: RLLR
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing co-owner Bobby Rahal says his team has “a long-term” plan for former Red Bull junior Juri Vips.
The 23-year-old contested the final two races of the 2023 IndyCar season with the team, finishing 18th on his debut. He missed out on a full-time 2024 seat to the Haas Formula 1 team’s reserve driver Pietro Fittipaldi, and currently RLLR is not in a position to add an extra car to run Vips part-time. But the team would like to.
“We exercised our option with Juri, and as I said several months ago, we see Juri as a long-term plan as well,” Rahal said to media including Formula Scout.
“So we’d like to run a fourth car. We’re not making as much progress on that as we would like. But that’s certainly a hope. And maybe it’s only a selected number of races. Maybe it’s only one, maybe it’s none. We’re not quite sure.
“But one thing we did know is we want to keep Juri in our family and he did a great job for us in Portland and fabulous job in Laguna Seca. It’s a shame the chaos at the start caught him out. But all in all, very impressed with Juri, so we certainly wanted to keep him within our organisation.
Rahal added: “Juri’s a good young man. I have to say that he did everything that we asked him to do. He, I think, showed that he certainly is capable of running up front in an IndyCar race. I’ve gotten to know Juri since he’s been with us. And that’s why we wanted to make sure we kept him, because we do want to run a fourth car, if at all possible.”
But if it is not possible, there is a back-up plan since Vips does not hold a specified role within the team.
“If we can help him get something when we’re not using him, when we’re not busy with him, why not? So introduced [Juri] to a few of the LMP2 guys at Road Atlanta, just doing what we can to help him. But clearly, we want to keep him because he’s a very, very good race car driver. And he will still perform work for us.”
IndyCar’s hybrid future is one attraction for Rahal of having a driver such as Vips, since he has tested hybrid F1 cars. But he has spent 2023 doing little driving of any kind bar his two IndyCar starts. Therefore getting him back in a cockpit sooner will be of greater value to Rahal.
“Certainly we’re not going to rush right in to the fourth car,” he said. “You’ve got to be prepared to do that, to do it correctly. To do it so that that fourth car actually contributes to going forward.”
When Rahal refers to his driver line-up he always mentions Vips, despite him having no formal association of being a reserve or test driver for RLLR, suggesting Rahal is working to making sure Vips is driving in 2024.