Photo Credit: Chris Jones/IndyCar
Graham Rahal, driver of the No.15 Steak and Shake Honda, had the best race of his season so far, finishing in the runner-up spot in the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motor Park. Rahal finished the race second last year as well.
The race was exciting specially for Rahal behind the wheel as he battled Simon Pagenaud for the win.
“Yeah, it was entertaining,” Rahal said. “That’s for sure. It was a fun day. Coming off Long Beach, a lot of fuel-saving stuff, so this was pretty cool to be able to press hard and use the tires and see how we can catch up to those other guys. Obviously spread out there quite a bit from the top four of us it looked like to everybody else, which was good. I liked that. But ultimately what a battle.
“I think on lap 30, my right front wing broke, the flap, which is just a simple part failure. I’ve never seen that before, but that hurt us quite a bit because from then on we were just trying to fight a lot of understeer in the car, and then we just kind of obviously lost the other side of the front wing a little later on. But other than that, it was fun.
“I knew at the end I could catch Simon. I knew we had the pace to do it. I thought I was the best on the long run all day, and quite simply we just let this one slip today. This one I feel like should have been ours. I let the guys down. I know it was exciting, but definitely felt like at the end we had the car to beat and just kind of took my eye off the ball there for a second when Jack was in front of us and looked down, pressed Push-to-Pass, and by the time I looked up and get my reaction, it was a little too late. These things happen.”
During the race Rahal went to make a pass on Pagenaud and in order to do so he had to use a push to pass, which is a mechanism on the car that allows the driver to increase the power for a short period of time. Though as he went to go under Pagenaud entering the corner, Pagenaud would come down slightly.
“Well, I had a heck of a run,” Rahal said. “He blocked me, a really solid block, and the worst part wasn’t that he didn’t leave the room, it was that he diagonaled to the apex, I mean, just turned in way earlier than you’d normally turn in. You can watch the overhead camera; it’s pretty easy to see. So I’m glad there was a no-call because for sure it’s a racing incident, but you would never turn in where he turned in. He was purposely trying to cut me off there.
“Now, at the end of the day, I don’t think that that was going to be the race. I felt like even had I not gotten by then, I was better than him on the old tires. I could see he was beginning to struggle quite a lot with his rear. I felt like my opportunity was going to come. I wasn’t going to force the issue, but I was definitely in a place where I’m not going to say the corner was mine because it wasn’t yet, but he could have given me a little bit more room, and obviously he chose not to. That’s racing, and we both made it through, and we continued on and made it exciting. I guess that’s the way it goes.”
Rahal credits Pagenaud for the block but doesn’t feel he should have gotten a penalty.
“No, look, we both got our — I wouldn’t want to see his day completely ruined by a call like that,” Rahal said. “Maybe that’s — maybe I’m one of the only guys to say that, but I’d hate to see his day go down the tubes. Look, that was the most physical race I’ve ever driven, 90 laps green run here is like — I guarantee you it’s harder than running a marathon. It’s hard to catch your breath. My drink bottle was empty about halfway through. I had this freaking blister the size of Texas growing on my hand. Lap 30, 40 it was coming in. It was everything I could do to hang onto the wheel at the end. I wouldn’t want to see his day ruined over a call like that.”
Rahal doesn’t feel the contact hurt his car, though, as he felt that he could keep going easily.
“My focus from that point on was I knew if I could get by Hawksworth I had the race won,” he said. “I knew he could not get back behind me unless traffic played a role, and without the right front wing it was harder for me to follow, particularly through 2-3. 2-3 earlier in the race, on power I was really strong.”
Once the battle with Pagenaud was over, though, it looked as though Rahal was set to sail off to victory. Unfortunately, contact with the lap car of Jack Hawksworth caused the front wing to completely come off of his car. He couldn’t believe he was able to hold onto the car and get the finish he did.
“I thought there was no way,” Rahal said. “Honestly I thought the day was completely, completely done. Even just losing the right front flap made a huge handling difference on my car, like massive. I thought knowing what that was, and now I’ve whole the whole left front flap basically, I thought I was toast. It was very hard to keep pace. I was having to stab the throttle to get the weight to transfer from the front to the back, to get the front tire to work at all. “It was not fun. You know, I was a little nervous that Aleshin was behind me because he tends to force the issue a little bit, and I was just hoping that they’d kind of sit back. It was selfish, but I was hoping they’d sit back and just kind of block for me, which it worked out.”
Rahal stated that this was the most physical race he has driven in a long time and that his adrenaline kicking in was what got him through.
“Just adrenaline, man. Trust me, on lap 45 like here this blister came in, I was like, holy smokes,” Rahal said. “The pain like in my hand, it was everything I could do to just hold the steering wheel. I was turning through the right hand, was just yanking down. Normally you push with the outside hand, and I’m holding as hard as I could with the right hand to help out a little bit.
“But it was tough. It was very tough. But at the end there, it’s like chasing the old rabbit, right? You see the old guy and you’re not going to give up until you get there. This year was a little easier to chase him down because last year I couldn’t see them. I had no clue where they were. I felt like I was chasing a ghost. This time around I could see him and it became a lot more fun. We cranked out some great laps today, and when we needed them we had them, and we were saving some good fuel there at the start, too.
“So all in all, it was physically tough because there was no time to breathe, and straightaways aren’t even long enough to really have the time to push the drink tube in your mouth, let alone actually drink. Pretty tricky day overall. But I hope there was a lot of action, because it was tough out there, a lot of sliding around, and it was tricky.”
Even though he is disappointed to not have won the race in Barber, he is looking forward to both the Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis as well as the 100th Running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by PennGrade Motor Oil. Both races will be ran at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the month of May.
“Everything,” Rahal said. “ Yeah, everything. Hopefully with this — today was good for us as a team because we maximized the laps of the weekend, so we’re going to probably be able to mileage our engine out before the Grand Prix, which will be good. We’ll get the new spec engine, and hopefully that will make a good difference for us for the Grand Prix. We’re sixth in points. Pag has got about a race lead on everybody by the looks of it right now, but we can make up some points here through the summer months, so I’m looking forward to it.”
