HILLIARD, Ohio - Having proven their mettle in the fires of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, Rahal Letterman Racing drivers Scott Sharp (#8 Patrón Dallara/Honda/Firestone) and Jeff Simmons (#17 Ethanol Dallara/Honda/Firestone) will look to build on strong Indianapolis 500 runs when the IndyCar Series heads for the Milwaukee Mile this weekend.

Sharp matched a season-best with a sixth-place finish at Indy, while Simmons ran in the top-five for much of the day before rain-induced strategies shuffled him back to 11th in the final finishing order.

The Ohio-based squad will now turn its attention to the flat one-mile oval on the grounds of Wisconsin State Fair Park for this weekend’s ABC Supply/A.J. Foyt 225, which is the sixth race on the 2007 IndyCar Series schedule. The first short-oval race of the year will see Simmons returning to the track where he set his career-best qualifying mark a year ago, as he earned the sixth-place spot on the starting grid. He led his first IndyCar race lap during that race while on his way to a ninth-place result.

“We had a pretty good car there last year,” Simmons said. “The tires are a little different I think, but we should be able to adjust to that. We had a good car there, we really should have qualified third but we made a wing change right before qualifying. We were running right up there all day long, then I made a mistake. I won there in the Pro Series and that is a place that you have to battle all day long. I look forward to going there.”

Sharp actually made his first appearance on the Milwaukee Mile in 1994, and has competed in each of the three previous IndyCar visits to the nation’s oldest and longest-running speedway. His best finish came in 2005 when he ended up 10th after starting the day in the 13th position.

“I’m excited to go to Milwaukee,” Sharp reported. “That’s a track that the team has run very well on. Hopefully all the work we’ve done this month will make us stronger on every track we go to and just give us a little kick in the tail. I love it. Milwaukee is a driver’s track. You drive it more like a road course, there are a few different lines you can use to get around there. It’s a flat track so we can carry some of what we learned here this month to there.”

Sharp’s strong Indy result, where he was also named as the recipient of the AAA Safe Driver Award for the 500-mile event, boosted him into eighth place in the season point standings, 20 behind seventh-place Tomas Scheckter. Simmons is 11th, but is just 11 markers out of the top 10 after five races. Rahal Letterman Racing has done well in its recent trips to the venerable oval, winning the pole in 2004 with Vitor Meira at the wheel. Buddy Rice set the bar with a second-place result in ‘04, while Danica Patrick matched her best-ever IndyCar finish there a year ago for the RLR team, ending up fourth after starting 14th.

“We’ve done well there, we’ve been on the pole there,” said RLR General Manager Scott Roembke. “I think if we can carry some of this competitiveness over to Milwaukee, we’ll be in good shape.”

Rahal Letterman Racing Milwaukee Notes:

After hosting the Champ Car World Series in its customary date on the weekend after the Indianapolis 500 for the past 11 seasons, the venerable Milwaukee Mile will see the cars and stars of the IndyCar Series journey from Indy directly to Milwaukee for the first time since 1995. The IndyCar Series will hit the tricky mile oval on the grounds of the Wisconsin State Fair Park for the fourth time in its 11-year history as the Rahal Letterman Racing team looks to build on the momentum gained with a promising Indianapolis 500 effort in which both cars ran up front and challenged for top-five finishes.

Scott Sharp will make his fifth visit to the Milwaukee Mile this year and his fourth with the IndyCar Series. This will be his first Milwaukee start for RLR. The Floridian has yet to have much like on the tricky oval, with a best qualifying effort of 13th and a personal-best 10th-place finish both coming in 2005. He made his first trip to Milwaukee in 1994, finishing 12th while in the Champ Car series. Sharp will make his 135th IndyCar Series start, the most in league history. Sharp expects to make his 127th consecutive start which is also a IndyCar Series record. His 74 top-10 finishes are also a league record, one more than the 73 put up by Sam Hornish Jr.. He has finished all but 12 of the 866 laps of competition run this season.

Jeff Simmons will make his 20th IndyCar Series start and his second at Milwaukee. Simmons qualified sixth last year at Milwaukee, establishing a career-best qualifying result that still stands. He led his first oval-track lap of his IndyCar Series career during that race as he worked toward a ninth-place finish.

Team Facts - Jeff Simmons led Lap 101 at Indianapolis, marking the first time a RLR driver led a lap this season. RLR has failed to qualify a car in the top 10 in each of the first five races of the 2007 season. This is the longest such streak since the team joined the IRL full time in 2003. The last time an RLR driver won a pole position was Danica Patrick at Chicagoland Speedway in 2005. RLR's last win came at Michigan August 1, 2004 (Buddy Rice). The team's current winless streak stands at 41 races. Rahal Letterman Racing has won 19 races and 29 pole positions since its inception in 1992 as Rahal Hogan Racing. Of Rahal Letterman Racing’s 19 wins only one has come on a street course, Bobby Rahal’s win at Toronto in 1992. Of Rahal Letterman Racing’s 29 pole positions, four have come on street circuits, the most recent being Michel Jourdain Jr.’s 2003 pole at Long Beach. Three of the four RLR street course pole positions have come at Long Beach. In 64 IndyCar Series races RLR has captured nine pole positions, won three times, collected 14 podium results (top-three) and 30 top-five finishes while leading 669 laps.