1,000 Greatest Drivers: Graham Rahal

Always found him underrated. Never liked him.

I’ll make this one free since I don’t think most people care about him much. I guess this one’s pretty topical since Rahal has just publicly trashed anyone who isn’t excited about the MAGA GP. I don’t like him. I’ve never liked him, but I begrudgingly grew to respect him. At first, I considered him to be an overhyped flop like Marco Andretti and Danica Patrick, and it seemed frustrating to me that, for a while, the only American drivers who could get a foothold into IndyCar were these big names while plenty of other drivers who showed well in the Champ Car and IndyCar ladder series didn’t have either that pedigree or that degree of hype and quietly disappeared. This was an era so dire for American open wheel talent that a merely good driver like Ryan Hunter-Reay (who honestly wasn’t really any more talented than Rahal anyway; just much, MUCH luckier) somehow procured the nickname “Captain America”.

While I begrudgingly started to become impressed by Rahal’s talent in the second half of the 2010s, his 2015 performances didn’t really seem sustainable to me, and both his wins were pretty annoying. In his Fontana win, he left the pits with his fuel hose attached; it fell onto the track and caused a caution, yet he wasn’t penalized and came back to win. In a race with 80 lead changes, I’m not sure how much skill was involved with that win anyway, since it feels like whoever caught a lucky draft at the right time would win. His Mid-Ohio win was significantly more annoying. He inherited the lead out of nowhere due to pit strategy after Sage Karam spun (in my opinion, intentionally) to help Scott Dixon’s championship chances in retaliation for Dixon being screwed by a previous caution. Then, he “outdueled” Justin Wilson on a restart. Wilson attempted a pass and, in my opinion, I believe he had the pass made, but Wilson decided to back down for his fellow Honda driver because Rahal was the last Honda driver remaining in the championship, and Wilson (who got screwed repeatedly and lost his Newman-Haas ride after 2008 even though he’d beaten Rahal in points) was only running part-time. And then he died in the next race. I know none of this is Rahal’s fault really, but it still rubbed me the wrong way.

What I haven’t liked lately is while he’s not only getting worse and worse with each passing year (which is why I feel it’s safe to write this now since I doubt he’ll ever have a season worth rating again), he’s developed this kind of fratboy vibe and clique with other drivers I don’t like including Alexander Rossi and Conor Daly. Josef Newgarden has lately been flirting with this, too. They seem to view themselves as enforcers who want to keep the rest of the field in line, and I think Rahal’s attacks on Romain Grosjean (really, the whole field’s attacks on Romain Grosjean) bothered me a lot. (I will at least grant that Daly is improving every year while the other three are consistently getting worse.) It’s like they bullied him out of the series when he clearly still deserved to be there on talent. Was Grosjean a dirty driver? Yes. Was Rahal much cleaner? I don’t know about that. And I’m not even gonna get into his politics besides that one snide comment.

But this is not about who I like and who I dislike. I aim for objectivity, and objectively, I think he had a much more impressive career than it looks on the surface. Considering Penske, Ganassi, and Andretti have won every IRL/IndyCar title since 2003, I think it’s quite impressive that Rahal managed to earn seven consecutive top ten points finishes from 2015-2021, driving for only his father’s pretty second-rate team. Some of his teammate comparisons are really impressive. You can debate whether Rahal or Takuma Sato was better, I suppose. Even though Rahal beat him by over a 2-1 margin, Sato won 4 times, including an Indy 500 and Rahal didn’t, but I think I would still take Rahal, since Sato lucked into at least two of those wins. His pummelings of Robert Doornbos and Oriol Servià and defeat of Justin Wilson are impressive, too. The narrative arc isn’t there, but the numbers are. And in this case, I guess I’m going with numbers over narrative. I do admit I was really impressed by Rahal outdueling Hinchcliffe’s illegal car in the 2.5-month Texas race.

Even if I once threw Graham, Marco, and Danica in the same bunch, retrospectively, Graham was obviously better than Marco, who was obviously better than Danica. Graham was probably basically interchangeable with Alexander Rossi and Ryan Briscoe, and I don’t think Hunter-Reay was better than any of them, even if he did win an Indy 500 and a title, and most of them did not. Just don’t expect me to root for him.

Weirdly, he’s exactly one position above his father in my open wheel model right now:

GRAHAM RAHAL.…………………..USA

Born: January 4, 1989

Best year: 2015
Best drive: 2016 Firestone 600 at Texas Motor Speedway

Although he was nowhere near as good as his car owner and three-time champion father Bobby, Graham Rahal was nonetheless one of the most underrated IndyCar drivers of the 21st century. Graham came of age at the very tail end of the Champ Car/IRL split. Even though Bobby’s team was racing in the IRL, Graham initially drove in the Champ Car ladder series because Bobby wanted Graham to make his own way without family help. Rahal narrowly lost the 2006 Atlantic Championship title to Simon Pagenaud, but he won five races to Pagenaud’s one while being almost five years younger. Rahal finished fifth as a Champ Car rookie in 2007, but that wasn’t that impressive since his Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing teammate Sébastien Bourdais dominated the season and swept him.

Champ Car’s most dominant team was thrown a curveball when the IRL absorbed Champ Car. Although the ex-Champ Car teams were given free chassis and engines, they were far behind on development. When Rahal crashed in testing for the Homestead season opener, he didn’t have a car to race. Undeterred, he bounced back and won his first IRL start in the next race at St. Petersburg, making him the then-youngest IndyCar winner. 2009 proved to be Rahal’s breakout season, as he earned his first top ten points finish, and throttled his teammate Robert Doornbos (who’d beaten Rahal and Pagenaud for Rookie of the Year) so badly that he pivoted from racing to dildo manufacturing.

Unable to find full-time funding in 2010, he increasingly emphasized the business side and became one of the best IndyCar drivers at finding sponsors. He drove for Chip Ganassi for two seasons, but was mildly disappointing except for winning the 2011 24 Hours of Daytona. He spent the remainder of his career with his father’s team, rattling off seven consecutive top ten points finishes from 2015-2021. In 2015, he finished fourth in points and won twice, including the Fontana race that boasted a record 80 lead changes. He earned another top five points finish in 2016 and impressively outdueled James Hinchcliffe in a photo finish at Texas. Despite only leading the last lap, Hinchcliffe had an illegal car, and he’d even lapped the field briefly. In 2017, he swept the Detroit doubleheader, but never won again. From 2018-2021, he was teammates with Takuma Sato. Rahal was much more consistent, beating Sato 32-13 in shared finishes, but Sato won 4 races, including the 2020 Indy 500.

Unlike his father, Rahal was never really a top-tier IndyCar star, but I think he was better than the nepo baby people remember him as because he only spent three years with elite teams. When adjusting for equipment, I think he’s pretty indistinguishable from Ryan Hunter-Reay. He proved himself equally competent at nearly all track types, even if his peak period of relevance was rather short. His family name probably helped sustain him over some less fortunate drivers with more potential, but he was still solid for much longer than most people realize.

Open wheel model: #319 of 931 (.033)

Teammate head-to-heads: 158-127 (2-0 vs. Oliver Askew, 0-11 vs. Sebastien Bourdais, 1-0 vs. Zachary Claman de Melo, 0-1 vs. Conor Daly, 8-5 vs. Devlin DeFrancesco, 8-19 vs. Scott Dixon, 6-2 vs. Robert Doornbos, 4-0 vs. Santino Ferrucci, 0-1 vs. Luca Filippi, 6-4 vs. Pietro Fittipaldi, 7-7 vs. Louis Foster, 8-18 vs. Dario Franchitti, 19-2 vs. Jack Harvey, 0-1 vs. Ryan Hunter-Reay, 6-8 vs. James Jakes, 11-7 vs. Charlie Kimball, 0-1 vs. Alex Lloyd, 18-21 vs. Christian Lundgaard, 5-1 vs. Hideki Mutoh, 1-0 vs. Giorgio Pantano, 2-1 vs. Spencer Pigot, 32-13 vs. Takuma Sato, 7-1 vs. Oriol Servia, 2-0 vs. Juri Vips, 5-3 vs. Justin Wilson)

Year-by-year: 2006: C-, 2008: C, 2009: C+, 2010: C, 2011: C-, 2012: C-, 2015: E-, 2016: C+, 2017: C+, 2018: C, 2019: C, 2020: C, 2021: C