Pole sitter Graham Rahal scores his first podium since Texas in 2021. (Photo: Logan Skidan | The Podium Finish)
SPEEDWAY, Ind. – It was so close, yet so far for Graham Rahal.
In a battle between some of the sport’s tenured veterans, Rahal fought hard to chase down Scott Dixon as only one man’s winless streak would come to an end. However, returning to the top step of the podium will have to wait for Rahal, who ended up under 0.4479 seconds shy of Dixon during Saturday’s Gallagher Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Road Course.
When dealing with “The Ice Man” for a race win, sometimes it takes a very rare driver error from Dixon to be conquered. Rahal knew that it would take such moment to win.
It was a valiant effort nonetheless as they dueled in the closing laps, utilizing whatever Push to Pass they had left in disposal, and put on a show.
“I could see he wasn’t sliding around a lot. He used the tires a little. Dixie is not going to just make a mistake. I knew it was going to have to be a flawless run,” Rahal said. “Frankly, I almost had it, meaning like I needed about one more car length to be closer out of 13 to be able to get by. But I pulled off of overtake because I wasn’t really gaining. I was kind of just holding steady.
“Because of his race pattern being so much more fuel saving, he had a lot more overtake at one stage. We were catching him at the end. He was starting to use overtake. At one point he had 60 seconds more than me. I think at the end we ended up equal. He was using it to stay ahead of me. That’s what I kind of love about our version of overtake frankly. It’s a mano-a-mano battle. You use it offensively, defensively. Not of this DRS crap that makes it easy.”
Although Rahal closed the gap to an attainable margin, Dixon was too much on Saturday.
“For me, I thought Dixon used it right today,” Rahal said. “I tried to do the best I could to challenge him. I just ran out of steam. I mean, leading up to the last lap, I went through the snake, turn seven, eight, nine, ten, I had zero grip. I lost about half a second, 3, 4/10ths. That was it.”
While Dixon celebrated his 54th career INDYCAR win, Rahal remains winless dating back to June 2017 when he swept both races at Belle Isle. All of that was irrelevant in the grand scheme of things considering the recent events for Rahal at Indianapolis.
Three months ago, Rahal had the worst month imaginable at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Namely, he failed to qualify in his No. 15 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda for the 107th Indianapolis 500. Not long after, he ended up replacing the injured Stefan Wilson although he wasn’t anywhere close to contention for the win.
Fast forward to August, Rahal put his Honda-powered machine on pole for the first time since Belle Isle Race No. 1 in 2017. Thus, a pole sweep for RLL Racing on the 2.439-mile road course as Christian Lundgaard, who started alongside Rahal, previously won pole in the GMR Grand Prix.
In a cruel twist, Saturday’s grand prix similarly mirrored Lundgaard’s race in May.
Rahal had a strong car and led a race-high 36 of 85 laps. However, he was unable to dethrone Chip Ganassi Racing for the win. Something people didn’t expect as Dixon rallied from a spin to extend his win streak at 19 consecutive seasons.
Despite not winning, Rahal’s best finish all season was something he won’t be ashamed of as his wife Courtney and their children shared a much happier bond in pit lane compared to Indy 500 qualifying.
“We have nothing to be ashamed of. I thought we laid it all on the line, did a great job as an organization this weekend. To get a podium in a year like this obviously feels good. To get a win would have been better, but that’s the way this goes,” Rahal explained. “I’ve said numerous times, these guys have worked extremely, extremely hard to get here, to get this organization back on track. It’s great to see the fruits of their labor starting to show.
“Being able to go out there and challenge really hard today, I thought we did. You guys see it, not me, I thought what I could see gap-wise we did the best job on blacks by far of anybody today. I knew when Alex (Palou) or Christian (Lundgaard) were behind me on blacks, they weren’t anywhere near our pace. I was able to hold Christian off on reds. The guys did a great job of giving me a car I could attack today. It’s a shame not to come away with a win, but that’s the way it goes.”
Rahal now has five top-10 finishes this season. (Photo: Logan Skidan | The Podium Finish)
The effervescent competitor in Rahal did explained how race traffic and the race’s only caution for a multi-car crash involving Dixon and Josef Newgarden played a crucial role in how his race unfolded.
More specifically, the former was where Rahal wasn’t pleased nor willing to go into details on Ryan Hunter-Reay’s (a close friend of Rahal) lack of courtesy to the leaders.
“I didn’t think it needed to be a lap and a half or two laps for him to let me by. Pato (O’Ward) will tell you the same thing,” said Rahal. “When you’re second back of a car, it becomes a struggle, period. It’s not easy. The lapped cars, they know that. They could make the job, particularly in the closing stages like that, slightly easier.
“Having said that, on the flipside, I thought Marcus Armstrong was amazing to let me right through. I was chasing his teammate. He certainly didn’t need to make my life that easy. He did a wonderful job. I saw both sides of it today. Dixie had the same.”
Despite Rahal’s comments on race traffic, he felt it ultimately didn’t cost his chances of closing the gap on Dixon. At the end of the day, it’s just part of racing.
“I don’t think it affected my ability to go challenge Scott,” he said. “It was the same for all of us at the front trying to work our way through the lapped cars. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.”
With three rounds remaining, Rahal has five top 10s and will enter Gateway 14th in the championship trail. A weekend like Indy is the momentum he hopes to carry going forward as RLL Racing have shown promise with Lundgaard’s win in Toronto and fighting hard to finish in the top-10 in points.
“It’s heading in the right way,” he said. “I said that to all of our sponsors in Nashville, said it to them again this morning when I saw everybody in the meet-and-greet. “Everybody has been very patient, which I know isn’t the easiest thing. I think genuinely we’ve shown now that Christian’s success and our flashes of speed at Mid-Ohio and other places weren’t a fluke. We’re genuinely getting a lot better.
“Hopefully that can carry over and we can build into a really strong winter and start off next year on a much better foot than we did this year.”
