Rahal win opens Detroit weekend
Graham Rahal had such a comfortable cushion while cruising toward victory at the Detroit Grand Prix he toyed with his push-to-pass system.
“I pressed it a couple times just for kicks,” he said with a grin.
He certainly didn’t need it.
Rahal won the first of two Detroit Grand Prix races easily, finishing six-plus seconds ahead of Scott Dixon on Saturday.
The Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver declared the day before he could dominate the field if he started up front. And, Rahal was right. He won the pole earlier in the day with his Honda-powered car and led a career-high 55 laps of the 70-lap race.
“I never felt that confident in my career,” Rahal said after his fifth career victory and fourth in two-plus years. “If everything went well, I knew we were going to be hard to beat. I just didn’t want to mess up.”
Rahal became the seventh IndyCar driver to win in the first seven races of the year.
James Hinchcliffe was third for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports, giving Honda the top three places in the race in the shadows of General Motors’ world headquarters.
Indianapolis 500 winner Takuma Sato was eighth with his Hondapowered car for Andretti Autosport.
Helio Castroneves, who barely lost to Sato last Sunday in a bid to win his fourth Indy 500, led for 11 laps but finished seventh to extend his winless streak to 51 races since winning his third Detroit Grand Prix in 2014.
IndyCar will conclude its only doubleheader of the season Sunday. NASCAR Xfinity Series: Kyle Larson easily won from the pole at Dover International Speedway in Delaware for his second straight victory in NASCAR’s second-tier series. Larson has won three times in six races this season. He was followed by Ryan Blaney, Daniel Suarez, Cole Custer and Ryan Reed.