On the cool-down lap following the edge-of-your-seat MAVTV 500, Graham Rahal took the brief occasion to note that there is, indeed, no I in team.
The 26-year-old Ohioan drove the No. 15 Mi-Jack Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda to victory over 250 scintillating, albeit mentally fatiguing, laps on the 2-mile oval to break a seven-year personal and team winless drought. His thanks blanketed the organization from co-owners Bobby Rahal, David Letterman and Mike Lanigan to the shop-based fabricator in Brownsburg, Ind.
“The team is why this has come together, each and every one of those guys,” said Rahal, who had been vocal in the offseason with his frustrations about the 2014 Verizon IndyCar Series season that produced four top-10 finishes in 18 races in his second year with the team.
There were some missteps on race set-ups and bad luck (five DNFs) played a role, and the team pushed the reset button. Veteran engineer Eddie Jones joined the program, as did Mike Talbott as head of the vehicle dynamics program and Martin Pare as head of vehicle ride control development to complement the staff. Rahal had worked with the trio in the past.
“I felt more confident in those people that not only were they very, very talented but they understood the meaning of a team, which we didn't have last year,” Rahal added, “and we had most of these guys already on the team, but they just have all been shuffled around to places that suit them, and it's obviously worked very, very well.”
The win in a race featuring an Indy car-record 80 lead changes and 3,173 on-track passes for position further validated the resurgence. Rahal has five top-five finishes, including three in a row, and has advanced a total of 40 positions relative to his qualifying spot through the 11 races. He started a season-low 19th at Auto Club Speedway.
“It feels good. I’m most happy for my dad and Dave and Mike and all our sponsors that kind of came back and gave us some life this year,” Rahal said. “There are a lot of people that made a lot of comments about myself and about our team and about our owners and everything else that weren't fair to be quite frank, so to kind of rebound the way we have all season feels good.
“It's been a good year, and we've shown that it wasn't like a one-hit wonder that we were good at Barber (finished second in late April). I feel like we're starting to find our form everywhere a little bit, and I think that's helping us in the big picture.”
Mike Conway, driving the No. 20 Fuzzy’s Vodka Chevrolet, recorded the last victory by a one-car team in Race 2 of the Honda Indy Toronto on July 20, 2014.