{"id":7105,"date":"2019-07-25T01:00:27","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T05:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=7105"},"modified":"2019-07-25T01:00:27","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T05:00:27","slug":"graham-rahal-says-results-will-come-ahead-of-home-track-mid-ohio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2019\/07\/25\/graham-rahal-says-results-will-come-ahead-of-home-track-mid-ohio\/","title":{"rendered":"Graham Rahal says results will come ahead of home track Mid-Ohio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Graham Rahal<\/strong> has the speed to compete in the NTT Data IndyCar Series. As a six-time winner in the series, he has the talent.<\/p>\n

But, it just hasn\u2019t come together as of late for the New Albany, Ohio native.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s race at Iowa Speedway was no different for Rahal, either.<\/p>\n

Graham Rahal says results will come ahead of home track Mid-Ohio<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Rahal had a fast car and was running well throughout the race, but suffered an engine issue with about 100 laps remaining, causing him to lose power in his car.<\/p>\n

With 37 laps remaining, a caution came out for a spinning Ed Carpenter<\/strong>. Rahal\u2019s pit crew was ready to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat last pit stop was amazing,\u201d Rahal said of his crew after the race. \u201cWe gained three or four spots. That was great work by them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rahal would go on to hold off a charging Sebastien Bourdais<\/strong>, even with the lowly powered car, salvaging an eighth-place finish.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Graham Rahal crosses the start\/finish line at Iowa Speedway. Photo by Chris Owens<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s frustrating and disappointing,\u201d Rahal said. \u201cIt just didn\u2019t work out quite the way I wanted it to, but our guys pushed hard. We had a decent car. You could say there was a lot of guys had bad cars tonight, but ours was decent. It had good pace even at the end there to hold off Bourdais. All is good. We just got to keep soldiering on.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Iowa, Rahal coincidentally remained in the eighth position in standings, and even gained some ground on the drivers immediately in front of him.<\/p>\n

Despite being on the outside looking in of a championship, he\u2019s still paying attention to the points race.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re always paying attention to it,\u201d Rahal said. \u201cWe\u2019re happy with the points that we gathered here. It could have been better. Honestly this year, we haven\u2019t had a lot of breaks, and I can\u2019t explain why that is, but hopefully it\u2019s going to turn around very soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is an all too familiar scene for Rahal, though.<\/p>\n

His career has been riddled with bad luck.<\/p>\n

During his best points finish of his career in 2015, Rahal won at Mid-Ohio and was nine points behind Juan Pablo Montoya<\/strong> going into the final pair of races of the year.<\/p>\n

He qualified in the front three rows at each of the final two tracks, but only had a 20th<\/sup> and 18th<\/sup>-place finish to show for it.<\/p>\n

Rahal finished fourth in the standings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to be honest,\u201d Rahal said. \u201cA lot of my career has kind of been like that. While it\u2019s frustrating, you\u2019ve just got to keep soldiering on. At some point it\u2019s going to turn. It has to turn. I don\u2019t know what else to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now as the series heads to the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, a track where he grew up at, Rahal will try to hone down the familiarity and go for his first win there since 2015.<\/p>\n

Dating back to 2014, Rahal hasn\u2019t finished outside the top five just once (P9 in 2018) in the past five races there. That includes a second career podium at his home track in 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor sure,\u201d Rahal said. \u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of Rahal fans with my father for many years, so it\u2019s a homecoming for me and I\u2019m excited about it There is great fan support which is probably the best part of it for me. I grew up going there and it is really one of the races that made me fall in love with Indy car racing. I have been very fortunate to win it in 2015, which is probably my best memory ever in racing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The results give Rahal something that can be utilized very well when having any kind of bad luck:<\/p>\n

Confidence.<\/p>\n

That familiarity and feeling of being at home is something that we\u2019ve seen pay many dividends to racers. It might be one of the reasons that Rahal has faired so well there in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a lot of confidence about Mid-Ohio,\u201d Rahal said. \u201cThe home track always gives you that little bit extra that you don’t know you have. We’ve done well there before and I feel like we’re going to have a good weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

On top of the hometown fans in Ohio, Rahal will also be dawning some Ohio colors this weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope this year with Fifth Third Bank on the car – another Ohio company – that we can get it done again,\u201d Rahal said. \u201cRoad course racing has been up and down for our team this year. Barber and Road America were very good but there have been other tracks that we did struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Rahal and his team can make all of the hometown buzz come together, it\u2019s bound to be a point of turnaround in not only this season, but Rahal\u2019s entire IndyCar career.<\/p>\n

It would be a glimmer of success that Rahal hasn\u2019t seen since his last series victory at Detroit in 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope we can go back and have some more success of our own,\u201d Rahal said. \u201cWe’ve had some great runs over the last handful of years and hopefully, we can this year as well.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
IndyCar Series Standings<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Position<\/strong><\/td>\nDriver<\/strong><\/td>\nPoints<\/strong><\/td>\nBehind<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/td>\nJosef Newgarden<\/td>\n487<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>\nAlexander Rossi<\/td>\n458<\/td>\n-29<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>\nSimon Pagenaud<\/td>\n429<\/td>\n-58<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>\nScott Dixon<\/td>\n389<\/td>\n-98<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>\nWill Power<\/td>\n322<\/td>\n-165<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6<\/td>\nTakuma Sato<\/td>\n311<\/td>\n-176<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
7<\/td>\nRyan Hunter-Reay<\/td>\n298<\/td>\n-189<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
8<\/td>\nGraham Rahal<\/td>\n290<\/td>\n-197<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
9<\/td>\nJames Hinchcliffe<\/td>\n279<\/td>\n-208<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
10<\/td>\nFelix Rosenqvist<\/td>\n255<\/td>\n-232<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Graham Rahal has the speed to compete in the NTT Data IndyCar Series. As a six-time winner in the series, he has the talent. But, it just hasn\u2019t come together as of late for the New Albany, Ohio native. Last week\u2019s race at Iowa Speedway was no different for Rahal, either. Graham Rahal says results […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":315,"featured_media":7107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1187,644,1188,1140],"class_list":["post-7105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indycar","tag-graham-rahal","tag-iowa-speedway","tag-mid-ohio-sports-car-course","tag-ntt-data-indycar-series"],"modified_by":"Connor Ferguson","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}