Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has bolstered its engineering staff with the addition of veteran engineer Allen McDonald as senior development engineer in a multi-year deal. McDonald has served as the race engineer or technical director for two IndyCar Series championships and two Indianapolis 500 wins. He joins RLL from Ed Carpenter Racing, where he oversaw the team owner’s pole-winning run at Indy this past May as race engineer.

“I’m very pleased that Allen has finally decided to join our team,” said Bobby Rahal, team co-owner with David Letterman and Michael Lanigan. “I have respected his ability for a number of years, dating all the way back to his time as an engineer at PacWest in the CART days and have shown interest in having him join our team. Allen obviously brings a lot of experience and success to the team but perhaps one of the biggest things I am excited about is the fact that he brings a fresh set of eyes and perspective. I can only think that he’s going to raise our level of engineering even higher than I feel it already is. We are very pleased and are looking forward to a productive off season.”

“Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing is recognized as one of the best teams in the IndyCar pit lane and I am excited to be part of that,” said McDonald. “I’m looking forward to working with everyone at RLL from the drivers to owners to the crew and hope I can contribute to the team’s future success.”

In 2018, RLL expanded to two full-season entries for the first time since 2013 when Takuma Sato returned to the team as Graham Rahal’s teammate. Season highlights included a win by Sato in Portland as well as a third and fourth-place finish in Iowa and Elkhart Lake for the Japanese driver, while Rahal finished second in St. Petersburg and earned 12 top-10 finishes. The team announced last month that both drivers would be returning for 2019.