INDIANAPOLIS — The resurrection of Graham Rahal in this year’s Indianapolis 500 starting lineup is one of the best “depths of despair to triumph over adversity” stories of the past decade.
But the roots of how this relationship began goes back 16 years.
When Graham Rahal was a 17-year-old rookie in the Champ Car Series in 2007, he raced for Newman Haas Lanigan Racing. The veteran driver on that team was former Formula One driver Justin Wilson of Sheffield, England.
Wilson helped mentor the son of 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal, and the two became great friends.
Justin Wilson was killed when the nose cone off Sage Karam’s crashed race car fell from the sky and hit the driver in the helmet at Pocono Raceway in August 2015. It was one of the saddest stories in IndyCar racing in the past 20 years, but younger brother Stefan Wilson was able to continue Justin’s legacy by competing in the Indianapolis 500 as a driver.
Stefan Wilson had made the Indianapolis 500 starting lineup on Saturday. One day later, Rahal was bumped out of the Indy 500 starting lineup by his Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing teammate Jack Harvey in Last Chance Qualifying.
It hurt Rahal to the core, but he vowed to remain a good teammate and help the other three RLL drivers prepare for Sunday’s Indianapolis 500.
But on Monday, Wilson was on the track for the full-field, two-hour practice session when he encountered traffic entering the first turn. Wilson checked up and Rahal’s teammate, Katherine Legge, slammed into the back of Wilson’s Chevrolet.
The two-car crash into the turn one wall was massive. The impact fractured the T-12 vertebra in Wilson’s back and sent him to IU Health Methodist Hospital.
Wilson will have surgery to repair the damage and stabilize his back on Wednesday morning.
Cusick Motorsports and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing needed to find a replacement driver for the Indy 500.
The obvious choice became the best choice as Rahal was named to take over Wilson’s No. 24 Chevrolet Tuesday morning at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“The Wilson family certainly in my life has had a very strong impact,” Rahal said Tuesday. “Everything in life happens for a reason. Sometimes it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but when I got the call from Dennis Reinbold Monday afternoon, right away I felt compelled that this was, for some reason, my calling was to be here, to be able to help as best I could and to fill in.
“Clearly this is Stef’s ride. It’s his seat. He’s done a great job to get it to the point that it is. It was an honor for me to receive the call.”
Before Rahal could take the ride, however, negotiations between Honda and Chevrolet had to be finalized. Rahal is a Honda driver at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. Wilson’s team is backed by Chevrolet.
The two sides agreed, and Rahal is now able to give something back to the Wilson family that helped him so much during the beginning of his Champ Car Series and later IndyCar Series career.
“I think about Justin a lot,” Rahal said. “When the call came, right away it was an immediate connection.
“Frankly, I think in many ways, Justin helped — in more ways than one kind of shape my career, not only as a man and who you should be, how you should act, all that stuff, but also, I remember in 2006 I was in Formula Atlantic.
“Of course, I don’t know why, but we had a joint autograph session with the Champ Car guys. We were in Portland. I was still dreaming that hey, maybe someday Formula One, and Justin Wilson was the guy who told me that it was way too political, and I didn’t have the right filter to enter Formula One.
“If it were not for him, I probably would have kept chasing a different dream. In many ways, he did help me, but I do know as a teammate, too, when I was with him at Newman/Haas and then again with Dennis at Iowa, he’s just a tremendous, tremendous guy, and Stef is right there with him.
“As I said, their entire family I have the utmost respect for, and in a scenario like this, I felt very — had it been something different, I don’t know how compelled I would have been, particularly with the storylines of the last couple days.”
On Sunday after he was bumped from the field, Rahal sat on the sidepod of his car and cried hard before he was comforted by his wife, Courtney, and his two young daughters, Harlan Ann, and Tinley.
It was Tinley that came up and put a smile on her father’s face.
“She’s two years old so she doesn’t really know what it was all about,” Rahal recalled. “All she told me when I hugged her was ‘Ooh, daddy, you’re wet.’ I was like, ‘Of course, I’ve been sweating for an hour.’
“I felt every emotion over the last couple of days. But as I’ve always said, and Dennis knows this well, that’s Indy. It can put you through a vicious cycle, and you never know what’s going to happen, how it’s going to take place. We don’t know how it’s going to end up in five, six days’ time.
“But at the end of the day, when an opportunity like this comes, you certainly are honored to get the call.
“For me, I won’t lie, I really did feel excited to have the sense that another team had the respect at least for me to call. It was a great opportunity to come out here and try to perform and be able to race this Sunday.
“You go through it all, the highs, the lows, and I still, as I said, don’t want to step in and take over here. It is Stef’s role. He’s put this all together, he and Don Cusick and Dennis Reinbold and everybody have put this entire program together.
“It’s a very unfortunate situation. I feel for him.”
The best thing Rahal can do to give back to Wilson is take his car from 25th starting position to forward in the field. Meantime, all three of the Rahal Letterman Lanigan cars will start behind Rahal’s Chevrolet.
Ironic how things work out.
“Trust me, for me it was a little bit of a bittersweet moment,” Rahal admitted. “I can’t thank Honda and Chevy and all the sponsors. It’s been a tough week for our sponsors, as well, and for everybody who’s been able to make this possible to release me to come over here.
“I’m super grateful.”