Richmond Top 3: NHL

Newman Haas Lanigan drivers Graham Rahal & Robert Doornbos enjoyed both their highest finishes of the season & their highest career oval finishes on Saturday night, both cars decked out in McDonalds liveries.

With the "red cars" dominating the season so far, especially on the ovals, it was refreshing to see a different shade of red car making the podium. Though qualifying well at a number of recent events, Rahal had been unable to translate that into results due to attrition.

"It shows how hard the McDonald's guys worked because honestly at the start of this weekend we weren't where we wanted to be and we were struggling. We just kept working through it. It's great to be on the podium. We've been good on the short ovals but we just need to find some more speed on the mile-and-a-half's. This was like a win for us. My engineers told me I needed to save as much fuel as possible. Its always hard to do as a driver because you want to push as hard as you can but you need to save fuel. I didn't understand it so much before but I did tonight. Martin, my engineer and I and all of the guys worked extremely hard this weekend and we made more changes this weekend that I can remember ever making. It feels great to get this result for the McDonald's team. It's a great way to go into some road races. We're looking forward to it."

Doornbos, who has been getting an oval education of late, held his own on the short track, just his 6th career oval staying out of trouble and bringing the car across the line in 9th place, adding to his overall points tally, and bringing him within 3 points of Raphael Matos in the chase for the ROTY title.

"That was very hard work for P9. It reminds me of my F1 days when you had to work really hard to get up there. I'm very happy with the experience. It was very good for us to come home like this. All my team did a great job in setting up the car, it was really good to drive. Unfortunately we got unlucky with the yellow twice. I think we had the pace, especially with new tires. I was pushing really hard and really enjoyed that. For me it was like driving like in qualifying for 300 laps. With a bit more luck with the yellows we would have been higher but I'm happy with a good solid race. This will make me stronger on ovals but I have to be honest, I look forward to the road courses."

Both drivers and their teams are looking forward to getting back on the more familiar road & street courses the middle part of the season holds, beginning with this weekend's Camping World Grand Prix in Watkins Glen.

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