(This story has been updated to add new information.)
The FBI launched an investigation at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing‘s headquarters Wednesday morning, Zionsville Mayor John Stehr confirmed to IndyStar.
“The FBI asked us to assist this morning as they served a warrant at the (Rahal Letterman Lanigan) headquarters building,” Stehr said. “Our officers stayed outside as the FBI agents entered the building.”
The nature of the investigation that began at 8:30 a.m. at the team’s facility at 10771 Creek Way in Zionsville was not disclosed to Stehr or his officers, he said.
IndyStar reached out to Rahal Letterman Lanigan, an IndyCar team owned by 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal, Hoosier native and legendary television host David Letterman and entrepreneur Mike Lanigan.
“We are cooperating fully with investigators. Given that this is an ongoing investigation, we are limited in what information we can share right now,” the team said in a statement sent to IndyStar. “But we intend to provide additional information as soon as we can.”
IndyStar reached out to the FBI but did not immediately receive a response.
Who are the owners of Rahal Letterman Lanigan?
Bobby Rahal, 71, is among a select group of people who have won the Indianapolis 500 as a driver and as an owner.
He won three championships and 24 races in the CART open-wheel series as a driver, including the 1986 Indianapolis 500. As an owner, he won the Indianapolis 500 in 2004 and 2020 as team owner for drivers Buddy Rice and Takuma Sato.
After retiring as a driver, Rahal held managerial roles with the Jaguar Formula 1 team and was an interim president of the CART series. He made one NASCAR start for the Wood Brothers during the 1980s.
Along with his longtime leadership of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, he is the founder and board chair of the Bobby Rahal Automotive Group, which owns car dealerships in Pennsylvania.
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David Letterman, 77, is an Indiana-bred native son turned iconic late night talk show television host on CBS, who went to Ball State University and was a grocery sacker in Broad Ripple as a teen.
When he met Rahal in 1986, they started casual discussions about Letterman’s interest in becoming involved in IndyCar. Ten years later, Letterman became part owner of then-Team Rahal.
Earlier this year, Letterman explained to IndyStar why he first wanted to join Rahal’s racing team.
“Being born and raised in Indianapolis, the Month of May, a fixture of my life and the life of all our friends, families, neighborhood, it was the thing and stayed with me,” Letterman told IndyStar’s racing insider Nathan Brown. “I’d follow the race and every activity during the month. And then as I grew older and moved away, the race went through a period where it was not so much fun as it could be. It was highly tragic in some years, and my interest in it sort of began to wane a bit. And then I returned to it when I saw every weekend this kid named Bobby Rahal running up front.
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“I started following him and was attracted to ‘the guy,’ not so typical of the drivers I was familiar with as a younger person,” Letterman said. “When he won in ’86, he came on (Late Night with David Letterman), and that was the beginning of our acquaintance, and it developed into a friendship, and I would attend races around the country when I had time off. From that, he was nice enough to let me come in and be a bit of a partnership on the team.”
Mike Lanigan is a businessman who founded a division of his father’s company Mi-Jack Products in Indianapolis in 1973. In 1989 he returned to his hometown of Chicago to become president of the company, which produces rubber-tire gantry cranes.
Lanigan became involved in racing in 1992 when Mi-Jack began sponsoring cars competing in CART and the Indianapolis 500. He is now co-owner of the Lanco Group, “a wide-reaching conglomerate involved in cranes, heavy equipment, industrial equipment, entertainment, motorsport interests and is part of a joint venture that operates the Panama Canal Railway,” according to the team’s website.
In December 2010, Lanigan joined the ownership team of Rahal Letterman Racing which was renamed Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.
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Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: FBI agents investigate Rahal Letterman Lanigan racing
