Graham Rahal finished the 2024 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season 18th in points, his lowest championship result since 19th in 2014. Can Rahal engineer a climb back to the front in 2025?
Sometimes, history repeats itself.
Rahal has a 126-race winless drought dating back to the June 2017 doubleheader sweep at Belle Isle Park. But he entered the 2015 season with a 123-race winless streak and won at Auto Club Speedway and Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, leading to a fourth-place finish in the INDYCAR SERIES standings.
“Frankly, when it takes that long to be in the position that I’m in without a win, the desire gets stronger and stronger,” Rahal said. “That also becomes an annoyance.”
Winning an NTT INDYCAR SERIES race is a big challenge, a complex problem to solve. The field is as competitive as ever, forcing perfection in all facets from teams and drivers.
Qualifying positions are determined by thousandths of a second. Races must be executed at a high level without any mistakes on track and pit road.
Even so, perfect weekends don’t always deliver trophies.
“The difference is how luck plays a role,” Rahal said. “In the middle of a baseball inning, you don’t get a yellow flag. That’s just the truth. In racing, some people get all the luck, and some people get none. That’s a real thing.
“You’ve got to not only pitch a perfect game in racing, but you’ve got to also have Lady Luck on your side in every regard, and it’s not an easy thing to have. I can’t say I’ve had any luck since 2015. Maybe it’ll turn back around and be favorable, but even this past year for me, there’s been races where we were very competitive. Sometimes you do everything flawless, and it simply doesn’t go your way. That’s becoming increasingly hard.
“I genuinely feel like on Sundays, I’m one of the best drivers out here. I really feel like when it comes to race day, there are not many drivers that can put a whole race together like I can. Unfortunately, we’ve had a lot of near-misses, and that’s a major frustration when it continuously bounces the wrong direction.”
Rahal, who has a top-10 finish in nearly 50 percent of his 292 career starts, never lost faith in the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team. Often, gains in one area like road and street circuits may compromise performance on ovals, or vice versa. Miniscule margins are the battle RLL is fighting.
“I do think what people fail to mention about our team is the direction is correct,” Rahal said. “Things are getting better. People fail to remember that our team has taken a big step forward. They want to knock us and kick us when we’re down, but we never get the praise that we deserve when you look at how much better we have gotten in many regards. We are improving in many ways, and I think we could use another really good offseason.”
Louis Foster, the 2024 INDY NXT by Firestone champion, was signed Oct. 9 by RLL. Rahal was fourth-fastest Oct. 11 in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES oval test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“We're continuing to invest in our performance with our R&D group,” RLL co-owner Bobby Rahal said. “We've been pretty competitive on the road courses and street courses. Still struggle a bit on the ovals, but I think we've got some good feel for where we need to be.
“We've brought back in Todd Malloy, who actually was Graham's engineer for the first race Graham won. But Todd is a two-time Indy 500 winner as an engineer, and he's kind of our lead race engineer now. I am really excited about that because I've known Todd for many years, and he's a really sharp guy.
“It’s all about improving our oval track performance. And the races were not too bad. We’re continuing to do what we can to improve ourselves. I think Louis (Foster) is part of that, frankly. There’s a lot of experience with Graham, who's got a great feel for setting up cars for the race, in particular.
“I think the combination of the two and whomever we might attract for the third seat, I think it's -- we naturally have big expectations for '25.”