'It sucks for Graham': World watches as Rahal family suffers thru Indy 500 qualifying disaster
INDIANAPOLIS – Graham Rahal is trying to explain to his daughter why Daddy’s crying.
It’s not working. You understand. It’s loud on the track at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and it’s Bump Day, so it’s chaos. It’s late Sunday afternoon, and in the final seconds of qualifying Rahal has just been bumped from the 2023 Indianapolis 500 by teammate Jack Harvey.
It’s loud here, but also, Harlan Rahal is just 2½ years old. It won’t be long before she knows more about racing than you and me combined, but right now she’s a toddler hanging onto Daddy, trying to understand why he’s crying so hard that he’s shaking.
Graham is attempting to explain it to Harlan, in words she can understand, and finally this is what he says:
“It’s a race,” he says.
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That doesn’t capture the drama, the tension, the family dynamics we just watched unfold, but it’s a start. If Harlan were a little older, though, Graham could have answered her question like this:
Go ask your grandfather.
Because Bobby Rahal has some explaining to do.
Bobby Rahal: 'It sucks for Graham'
Bobby Rahal is a team owner and he’s a dad, and right now he’s struggling with the emotions himself. See, Graham Rahal is one of four cars racing this week for Rahal Letterman Lanigan, and the “Rahal” on the RLL letterhead isn’t Graham. That’s Bobby, the 1986 Indy 500 champion. Also, Graham’s father. Also, Harlan’s grandfather.
RLL has four cars here, as I said, and while three made it into the field, RLL was far and away the slowest team out here. With 34 cars trying to make it into the 33-car field, there were four cars competing for the final three spots Sunday in what’s called Last Chance Qualifying – and three of them were RLL cars.
That’s bad.
So Bobby Rahal is sitting there, trying to come to grips with what has just happened to his team, to his son, and I’m asking him what he feels like right now: A dad, or a team owner?
“Both,” he says, “and this sucks.”
“It sucks,” he says again. “It sucks. It sucks for Graham, but great for Jack.”
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Bobby has tried to play it down the middle. He watched Last Chance Qualifying from a golf cart behind the 3-foot cement wall separating the track from fans and media. His cart is positioned closest to his son’s team, yes, but on Bobby Rahal’s head is a No. 45 hat. The No. 45 car, part of the RLL stable, is driven by Christian Lundgaard.
Talking some more, saying he’s happy for Jack Harvey, Bobby smiles – but it’s one of those sad ones. The corners of his mouth are curling up, but his eyes aren’t smiling.
“I’ve already given him a hug,” Bobby says of his son. “I’ll probably give him a few more. He’ll be better for this, just like I was, but it sucks.”
Just like I was.
That’s another part of this story.
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The cruelty of this, well, it’s unfathomable.
For more than 30 minutes on Sunday, see, Graham Rahal had been in the field. After one attempt by each of the four competitors in the Last Chance Qualifying, Rahal was third-fastest of the four, which means he was 33rd – P33, you call it – in the 33-car field. Jack Harvey was fourth of four, which is another way of saying: He was out.
But there were still 35 minutes left of the hour allotted for Last Chance Qualifying, time for Harvey to go back out and try to post the second-fastest time of the final foursome, which would’ve moved Sting Ray Robb, currently sitting P32, to P33. That would’ve bumped Graham Rahal from the field, yes, but there was still time. In a perfect world, Harvey sits P32 and Robb P33 when Rahal goes out for his final qualifying attempt and bumps Robb, leaving him no time for another chance.
The day was perfect – 78 degrees, blue skies, kids playing football on the infield while cars roared 235 mph – but the ending was not. Harvey’s second qualifying attempt wasn’t fast enough to bump anyone. He was still on the outside. Now there was time for one more attempt, but just one. Sting Ray Robb, sitting P32, was now safely in the 33-car field.
The final spot would come down to Jack Harvey or Graham Rahal.
At 5:04 p.m., with seconds left in Last Chance Qualifying, Harvey pulled out of his pits, leaving Graham Rahal sitting in his car in the pit stall behind him. That’s where Rahal monitored the IMS scoreboard and RLL radio channel as Harvey uncorked a first lap that wasn’t going to be fast enough to bump anyone, followed by a second lap that wouldn’t be fast enough either. To that point nobody in Last Chance Qualifying had gotten faster as they turned their four laps, meaning, it was over. Graham Rahal was in. Harvey was going to be bump—
Wait, what just happened? Harvey’s third lap was faster than his second lap?!?
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” IMS announcer Dave Calabro was shouting over the loudspeakers as the unthinkable was happening. With one more lap like that one, Harvey would bump Graham Rahal … and there it is. He’s just done it. These laps go fast, you know. No time to think. Can’t imagine what Graham Rahal was thinking in his cockpit, or what RLL owner/Graham’s dad Bobby Rahal was thinking just a few feet away, as he watched it all happen.
Graham climbs out of his car to hugs from three crew mates. He’s keeping it together as NBC approaches for a quick interview.
“It sucks,” are his final words for NBC, and now he’s alone, and crumbling. Graham’s face drops as he sits on the car, head in his hands, sobbing. Here comes his wife, longtime NHRA star Courtney Force, and their two small children. Harlan is the older of the two, and she’s climbing into Daddy’s lap, and Daddy’s trying to explain. He regains his composure until the family moment is over and he’s heading to the team’s nerve center a few feet away, all those computers spitting out all those numbers.
Now Graham’s letting out some other emotion.
“Can I get my (expletive) helmet back?” he’s asking nobody.
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What happens next? More drama. Perhaps something even more unthinkable.
This failure to qualify for the Indy 500, which Graham Rahal has raced 15 times and posted three top-five finishes – he generally races better than he qualifies – could be the final issue that drives him out of RLL. Don’t think it can’t happen. Graham’s five-year contract expires after this season, and all week he has refused to say he’ll be back.
“Anything is on the table,” he was telling our IndyCar insider, Nathan Brown, on Tuesday. “When my deal is up, do I see myself retiring? No, but I’m also not going to sit here and not run up front when I know I can compete with those guys. I just don’t want to sit here and keep running around in 20th.”
“I’ve made no decision,” he’d say later. “I think I have a lot to add to the equation. Period. I’m very confident in saying that.”
RLL has been mostly uncompetitive all season, and this week got worse as it went along. RLL cars were running slow and Graham Rahal, far and away the most accomplished driver of the bunch, was slowest of all. For the first round of qualifying Saturday, the results posted by IndyCar showed the 34 drivers making 82 total attempts. Callum Ilott ran the 82nd and slowest time, but once he swapped out his damaged chassis, he posted the 28th-fastest time Saturday to get into the field.
The next three slowest attempts Saturday, according to IndyCar? Graham Rahal, Graham Rahal, Graham Rahal.
“Just not good at all,” Rahal said after his first attempt.
“Unfortunately, (the car is) not improving,” he said after the second.
“I don’t know what else to do,” he said after the third.
All that was left was Bump Day, and Graham Rahal went out there and got bumped. Hey, it happens. Even happened to his old man, to Bobby Rahal himself. Thirty years ago, almost to the day, Bobby – the defending IndyCar series champion – was bumped from the 1993 Indy 500. That led to some soul-searching, and a switch from a chassis he’d developed personally to a tried-and-true Lola tub, and Bobby roared to top-10 finishes in 11 of the final 12 races. He finished fourth that season in points.
Bobby Rahal seemed to think, late Sunday afternoon, that he knew what his son was feeling.
“He’ll be better for this,” Bobby had said, “just like I was.”
Not sure about that. Bobby wasn’t driving for his dad in 1993. And he wasn’t boxed into one qualifying attempt, and only one, before being bumped on the final attempt by one of his dad’s other cars.
This was hard, this day. Hard on everybody. Hard, even, for Jack Harvey.
“He wants to be in the race, I want to be in the race,” Harvey said of his teammate, Graham Rahal, during a news conference in the IMS media center. “It’s a tough day, mate. What I said to Graham: ‘I’m sorry, I’m not sorry.’ What do you say in that moment? I want to be in the race.”
Graham Rahal didn’t attend the news conference. He did all his interviews on the track, and he answered every question, and he answered them with class and patience. And when it was over, when his daughter was gone and his father was gone and it was just Graham sitting on his car, he buried his face in a towel and cried his heart out.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.