Life remains in Rahal’s IndyCar career amid RLL’s new dawn

Credit: James Black

Graham Rahal sees all of the talk. He sees the negativity. He sees the derision.

There is no getting away from the fact it has been a tough and uncertain few years for the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL) team. There has been a lot of turnover in personnel and deep inquest to find a solution to their troubles.

For Rahal himself, a former fourth-place championship finisher in 2015, there has been a noteworthy slump in the standings in recent years. 

He finished inside the top 10 in points in seven successive seasons from 2015 through to 2021. As recently as 2020 and 2021, he was sixth and seventh in points. But the trajectory has been a downwards one since.

Eleventh. Fifteenth. Eighteenth. And currently 18th again past the midpoint in 2025.

It is over eight years since Rahal won a race - all the way back in Detroit in 2017. But a six-time race winner dating back to a scintillating debut victory in St. Petersburg in 2008, this is not someone who feels down-and-out as an IndyCar driver. Far from it.

He is acutely aware of people questioning his credentials. Unfairly so, he insists.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing: ‘He can’t drive. He’s only there because of his dad.’ All this bulls**t,” Rahal says. “It gets old because the reality is the performance - in qualifying in particular - speaks for itself.”

This is a very different world to which his father Bobby, a three-time CART champion and 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner, emerged through during his own storied racing career. There is a whole different level of attention and scrutiny to contend with.

And as easy as it may be to say or suggest, it is nigh on impossible to shut out.

“The negativity spread - the social media BS - that everybody has got to deal with today wasn’t a thing of the past,” the younger Rahal observes as he meets with media on Tuesday. “Certainly you live under a magnifying glass a lot more.”

Credit: James Black

He is not unwilling to tackle some of the criticism head-on when it comes to it. One of the elder statesmen of those still active in the series and blessed with vast IndyCar experience, he knows when things have gone too far.

No doubt, Rahal is the first to admit when things are awry at the team or in his own driving. He is well-known and admired for his candidness. But he is also fiercely protective of the team in which he is the veteran driver and which his father owns and runs.

“I just don’t think people like to give recognition for sort of the positives that teams like us have,” he says. “And rather they focus on all the negatives. 

“RLL is unfairly scrutinised. We’ve had our challenges - there’s no doubt about that. But we have been competitive. We have been fast at a lot of places. We have shown massive improvement at a lot of places that I don’t think people recognise. 

“It’s the modern-day society to, rather than look at all the positives of what’s going on, just focus on the negatives. ‘Let’s lock in on those negatives and let’s be as loud as we can on Twitter or wherever you want to be.’”

Rahal is keen to point out that, while he is two years shy of a decade winless, he has been within touching distance of a return to Victory Lane on numerous occasions. 

Fuelled by successive Indy 500 Last Chance Qualifying appearances - including being bumped from the race in 2023 - and a close escape again this season, many have voiced doubts over his front-running capabilities. 

Nonsense, he suggests. Just look at the Grand Prix of Indianapolis at the start of May.

“Obviously this year has been an interesting year with [Álex] Palou and [Kyle] Kirkwood dominating but the realities of the situation are that it’s an extremely competitive field. It’s very, very tough,” Rahal explains. 

“Yet we’ve been able to rise to the occasion and took the fight to Palou at the Indy GP. For sure, anybody at that stage was taking a knife to a gunfight against him. And we led 49 laps. We did the best job anybody has really done head-to-head, mano-a-mano against him this year.”

Credit: Walt Kuhn

Having felt the immense high of victory six times in his now-300-plus starts, it is hard for Rahal not to long for that feeling again. By the same token, it is difficult not to look back with regret at the near misses.

Visions of mistimed cautions, lapses in execution and Scott Dixon swirl in his head. 

“It’s been too long since we’ve won,” Rahal says. “There’s been a lot of close moments that I wish we could take back and do things slightly differently. People forget in that span, at least two times I should have won the Indy GP alone had it not been for these random BS yellows.

“[Yellows] worked for Dixon running last one year and Dixon again another year; he’d just pitted and it went yellow and it screwed all the leaders. We were winning that race by 20-plus seconds. So it’s not like we’ve been nonexistent. We’ve been there.”

Rahal is 18 years into his IndyCar career, but such was the young age at which he started as he won his maiden race as an 18-year-old, many forget he is still only 36 years of age. There should be plenty more time to right the wrongs for as long as he is willing to continue.

Father Bobby believes there is still plenty of mileage in the tank if willingness matches.

“Heck, I retired at 45,” he recalls. “Somebody told me Takuma [Sato] is 48 or 49 now. It’s really up to Graham but there’s still a lot of runway out there. Regardless of that, we’re going to make sure that we have a team that’s capable of winning races.”

Whether discussion surrounding his victory drought or scrutiny aimed at his family team, Rahal may take notice but does not let himself get rocked by that external talk.

For all the negativity aimed at an RLL team that has seen its force as a frequent race winner wane, Rahal is confident that the instability that has plagued the team in recent seasons is starting to diminish. 

Credit: James Black

A mass of wrong decisions have been detrimental within this unsettled period. While there is a sense that solutions are starting to be uncovered, it has led to a lengthy game of catch-up. But Rahal will keep blocking out the noise and follow the process.

“I don’t care what anybody wants to say,” he insists. “We see all the negatives and so on but the team has made huge strides this year. 

“The downside has been the performance on the ovals for sure. Having said all of that, we’re finally getting some stability in the engineering corps that’s going to help us a lot. We’ve had a lot of turnover the last four years. We’ve had a lot of changes. 

“We’ve had a lot of different methodologies come through. We’ve had to unwind a lot of the things that we did over the last two years and backtrack on them, even with shocks and dampers and aerodynamics and a lot of things. 

“Unfortunately when you’re in this position, your test days are the race weekends. It’s just the fact. Even this coming week at Mid-Ohio, there’s a lot of things on my test list that maybe ordinarily you wouldn’t try on a race weekend but are things that, as the team leader, I have to test on Friday or Saturday morning to get a direction to go forward the rest of the races.”

Even if he is finding himself on the back foot at times, Rahal has found form. As he notes, oval performance remains a worry. But amid his rallying cry about looking at the positives, he is on a run of three successive road-and-street Fast Six qualifying appearances.

“I think that’s something I can’t say has ever happened prior,” he says. “Nowadays in particular, as competitive as it is, it’s extremely difficult to do.”

RLL’s form on road courses in particular was emphasised by Rahal starting second, rookie teammate Louis Foster third and Devlin DeFrancesco fifth for May’s Indy GP. A further marker was laid down last time out at Road America as Foster claimed a shock first pole.

Credit: James Black

The team was struck with the loss of Christian Lundgaard - their only race winner since 2020 - to Arrow McLaren over the off-season. With Pietro Fittipaldi also departing, Rahal has had two new teammates in 2025.

Foster and DeFrancesco currently sit 23rd and 25th in points but Rahal is pleased with the pair. 

“Louis has been tremendous lately as far as his performance,” he assesses. “He’s really stepped up. Earlier in the year, I think he struggled a little bit to get used to the car et cetera but he’s done a wonderful job. 

“Dev probably should have been there at Road America. A couple little mistakes, and probably putting a little bit too much pressure on himself. He’s got the speed but Road America highlighted the personal pressure he’s putting so we’re going to try to help him. But I think the pace has been there. 

“He’s struggling in points - we all are - but Dev has had a lot of pace at a lot of races. I’ve had guys like [Scott] McLaughlin even and Will Power and, all these guys, come up like: ‘Damn, that kid can be fast.’”

Rahal even earmarks the likes of pit stops as being a highlight of recent races in the team’s search for wholesale execution. But that quest does remain a work in progress given the overhauls in recent times.

“We’ve got a lot of work still to be done. That’s clear,” Rahal admits. “We need to execute, me and the team, at a higher level. And if we do that, there’s no doubt we can take the fight to these other guys. 

“I think we can do it. We’ve just got to continue to work and get better.”

In the midst of highlights such as Rahal’s string of strong non-oval qualifying results and Foster’s pole, long-standing struggles on ovals have persisted. 

It was a matter of relief rather than rejoicing when Rahal avoided Bump Day by a mere position for the Indy 500 before a race run drastically off the pace. Gateway then felt like a repeat as Rahal ran slowly and finished the race seven laps down. 

Credit: Dominic Loyer

The recent Iowa Speedway test for Foster was hardly better.

“Short oval package is a major concern right now for us. Major,” Rahal emphasises. “Didn’t have a great test at Iowa at all with Louis so we’ve got some work to do there. We’re trying our best to figure out what is going on and why the ovals have been a bit of a struggle. 

“But there’s some big questions. After Gateway, we found some things with the underbody of the car - on my car in particular - that the skid wasn’t adhered to the chassis correctly. A lot of people used a carbon fibre skid - it was quite common and we did there - but unfortunately it was sucking down and creating a big loss of downforce underneath the car. 

“So there are things that were obvious that we found like that. But the reality is there’s a lot of things that we’re still trying to gain.”

This is a pertinent concern with four of the final eight races of the season being held on ovals. And even on road and street tracks, while there has been raw qualifying speed, converting to race results on a Sunday has been a challenge.

Rahal’s sixth-place result after his front-row start for the Indy GP remains the team’s best this season. Their only other top-10 finish was Sato in the one-off Indy 500 entry after starting second - a drastic contrast to Rahal being among the rear rows.

Consistently applying the highs across the diverse range of tracks is the team’s biggest struggle.

“Our team took a huge shift,” Rahal explains. “We used to be the Sunday team and we struggled with qualifying. Obviously now our qualifying pace is better but we need to get our race pace back into the ballgame.

“We’ve got to get a little bit better. Strategy for sure we’ve got to get better. But the road and street course packages seem to be moving forward a lot. We’re certainly pleased with that.”

Credit: Chris Jones

Ultimately though, encouragement can be taken from the fact that foundations are now in place to rectify areas where the flaws have stemmed from. There is a vision that people are keen to buy into.

A chief example is Jay Frye, who left his role as IndyCar president shortly before the start of the season and promptly joined the RLL project. He is now the face of this ever-growing latest chapter and, as it is hoped, final reset after a bout of false dawns.

“We’re in a much better position,” Rahal observes. “RLL is an attractive place for people. There’s certainly employees, engineers and people that are interested in coming to work with us that maybe weren’t over the last few years. 

“Definitely a better environment and hopefully we can continue to move that forward with Jay and dad and Mike [Lanigan, co-owner] and the entire organisation.”

Frye’s addition as team president came amid a shake-up that saw chief operating officer Steve Eriksen depart the team at the beginning of April.

Suggestions from the Rahal father-son duo that the team needed to be revitalised is not intended as a slight against those who served at RLL previously. But there is also knowledge that racing is perennially a cutthroat business.

“This is no criticism of, for example, Steve Eriksen,” Bobby says. “I thought Steve did a great job for us during his period of time with us. But Jay Frye has brought an energy into the organisation that I think we’ve needed. And Jay is a racer - you can see that in how he works with people and how he does things.”

Among those recently added to the engineering department is Todd Malloy, who has played a significant role as the team’s lead race engineer and actually engineered Rahal’s debut win with Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing in 2008. 

He has crucially helped to bring an increased sense of leadership within the organisation.

Credit: James Black

“Our pace recently this year has shown the benefit of the people that we’ve brought in on the engineering side,” Bobby discloses. “Todd Malloy is a really sharp guy and he’s brought a lot of discipline and insight into the team and the engineering group.

“Daniele [Cucchiaroni], who engineers Louis, again [brings] experience, insight. Been very pleased. Ashley Higham, who engineered Graham the last two years, is really maturing under their guidance. I just see good things happening as we build this organisation.”

RLL has become a team of burgeoning talent. And while Higham has moved to the DeFrancesco No.30 entry this season, having worked directly with him on his stand previously, Graham is also nothing but positive about the young engineer and shares his father’s sentiments about the wider group.

“There’s a lot of reasons to be positive,” he claims. “There’s a lot of young guys. Ash is a future star. Tim [Trowbridge] on my car, my assistant, the dude is an absolute stud - absolute star in the making. There’s a lot of great young people within the organisation that have a really high ceiling and bright future. We’ll keep working towards that.”

That positivity now needs to translate to results and the RLL trio need to be fighting for more than a best of 18th in the standings. But there is a long-term view to the ongoing project and revamp at the team and results will not always be immediate in such a process.

For gain sometimes comes pain. And RLL can be, for now, content that they are at least seeing some incremental gains.

“We’re getting there,” Bobby says. “I don’t know if we’re quite there yet but we’re getting there. We’ve got a lot of talented young people who are relatively inexperienced but they’re gaining a lot of experience quickly and we’re seeing the benefit of that. 

“With each race, everybody learns that little bit more and things become better. We’re getting close. As we go forward, we hope to strengthen the engineering group even more so because obviously that’s key. So far, I’m pretty pleased with our pace this year. We have the speed; now we’ve just got to put everything together come race day.”

Credit: Aaron Skillman

From a driving side too, while his status in the standings may not reflect it, Graham possesses a sense of hope that he has lacked. Optimism is emerging.

“I’m pretty pleased with the direction that I see the team in,” he remarks. “I’ve got a sense of confidence and positivity about me that I don’t think I’ve had in a long time. 

“Obviously I’m not pleased with where we’re at in points, particularly considering how the start of the year really was. We were so competitive and yet we continued to blow opportunities. But we’ve still got to look at the positives of where we’re at and we’ve been a lot better than what we’re showing.”

Graham now heads into his family’s home race at Mid-Ohio with Bobby the Grand Marshal for the event. What better opportunity to capitalise on RLL’s recent road course speed and quell the talk of being over 100 races winless and crown the team’s new dawn?

“Particularly to get that eight-year monkey off my back, you have no clue what that would mean.”