INDIANAPOLIS — One of the most senior drivers in the NTT IndyCar Series, Graham Rahal has quietly put together a solid start to the season.
Through five races and heading into this weekend’s Sonsio Grand Prix on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, Rahal ranks 10th in the standings and has collected three top-five finishes.
Rahal and the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team has had success on the Indy road course in the past. Rahal finished sixth last year and has 15 top-10 finishes in 17 races on the road course.
“It’s been a great track for us. Overall, it’s a place that we’ve had some good success at. I wish I could sit and tell you exactly why,” Rahal said during a midweek media call. “I don’t have that answer, but it’s a place that we’ve enjoyed, that we’ve — even honestly a couple years ago, even last year, I qualified second and Louis (Foster) was third. Maybe it was two years ago when I was on the front row, and we had a few of us in the top five, and the setups were completely different, yet we were all fast.
“I’m not sure why it works there, but I’m excited to go back. I’m particularly excited just based on the performance we’ve had on road and street courses so far. Even the short oval, right? I had a great one at Phoenix. But for me, I’m excited to go back and see what we can do this weekend, for sure.”
Rahal said it is a critical month for his team.
“I feel like this is a big month for us. It is for everybody. Obviously, the Grand Prix, we expect to go there every year and be very strong. It’s really critical that we get the oval side kind of kicking off,” Rahal said. “In our car, we’re in the top 10 in points. So it’s a big month to carry momentum. Clearly, we go right from here on to Detroit and everything else. Detroit we started in the top five last year. Hopefully we can carry that on, that performance that we had.
“This is a critical time for us in every regard because, when you’re kind of in the hunt like this and you’re not that far out, each and every race carries a lot of weight,” Rahal added. “When you come to a track like Indy, road course in particular, where we know we’ve been very strong, the expectation is very high.
In my car we are going to try some new things this weekend compared to what we would have run here last year, and really the objective there isn’t simply just to find speed, it’s also to find tire life and consistency.”
Rahal knows he and the RLL team have struggled at the Indianapolis 500 in recent years.
“This is a big month for us. You guys know that,” he said. “Our back’s been against the wall a lot when it comes to Indy, and hopefully we’re going to turn that around this month on the oval of course. Hopefully we’ll get that spun around and have a really good one.”
Still, Rahal doesn’t feel desperate to win the Indianapolis 500, where he’s made 19 starts without a victory.
“I don’t think it’s been much of a burden for me. What I look at is when you look at all the people that have competed in the Indy 500, very few have ever won it,” Rahal said. “It’s just the reality. I don’t sit here and be disappointed in myself that 19 tries at Indy and I haven’t won it or whatever.
“Look, I’ve been close before. I’ve been closer than a lot of people have been, and it hasn’t happened. It adds fuel to the fire each and every year to try to go and do it and get it off my back, but the reality is too that — you know, this place, 500, I don’t know what the ratio is, but probably 95 or more percent of the people that compete in it will never get the chance to sniff a win. So you can’t look down upon yourself.”
Rahal nearly won the race in 2021 but came up short on fuel at the end.
“Unfortunately, yeah, sometimes I do sit and wonder, am I ever going to get that close again?” Rahal said. “The reality is you just don’t know. That year felt like the year. But like I just said, this place chooses its winners, and sometimes they make complete sense, and sometimes they don’t. That’s just the way that it goes. Here we are to fight again.”
Rahal is optimistic about his Indy 500 car after testing last week at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“Our car was much better at the open test than what I’ve had the last few years, so I do have some confidence at least in that regard. We didn’t do any qualifying simulations or anything like that,” Rahal said. “So I don’t really know where we’ll stack up in that regard, but overall that was an important test to validate some of the changes that we made, some of the things we’ve done in the off-season that we were hoping would be better, and frankly many of them — not all, but many of them were. So we’re excited for what’s to come here.”
