Rahal Leads Honda Qualifiers at Barber Motorsports Park
• Best qualifying effort of 2015 for Rahal
• Hinchcliffe, Filippi also advance through two qualifying rounds
• Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama runs Sunday

In his first Firestone Fast Six appearance of 2016, Graham Rahal led the Honda contingent Saturday at Barber Motorsports Park and will start sixth in Sunday’s Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama. In addition to being his best qualifying result of the season, today’s performance is also Rahal’s strongest qualifying effort in seven starts at the scenic road course just outside of Birmingham, Alabama. In his best previous race at Barber, in 2015, Rahal started eighth and went on to finish second.

James Hinchcliffe continued to show good form on the road and street circuits of the Verizon IndyCar Series, qualifying eighth today for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports, with Luca Filippi also making it to the second round of “knockout” Indy car qualifying to start 12th for Dale Coyne Racing.

Sunday’s 90-lap Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama starts at 3 p.m. EDT, with live network television coverage on the NBC Sports Network.

Graham Rahal (#15 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda): “It will make life a little easier, being this far forward [for the race start]. It’s always an interesting race around this place but we’ll just have to see how it plays out tomorrow. For us to get into the Fast Six, I did was about as good of a lap as I think I have ever put together here. From comments I’ve heard, others are struggling with the rear tires going off a lot in the long run and I don’t really have that problem. We’re going to keep our heads down, keep focused and just out race them a little bit. And if we can keep the rear tires under us, and save some fuel hopefully to make the end of the race easier so we can attack hard, I think it will put us in a good spot.”