Rahal doubles down in Detroit GP
He dominates IndyCar weekend, is first to sweep Belle Isle races
Graham Rahal wasn’t happy about a red flag that resulted in a late restart. He also said he wasn’t worried about holding off Josef Newgarden to complete a weekend sweep in the Verizon IndyCar Series.
Rahal became the first IndyCar driver to complete the doubleheader sweep of the Detroit Grand Prix on the 14-turn, 2.35mile Belle Isle course. He swept in dominating fashion, leading 96 of 140 laps over the two races, including 41 Sunday.
“Well, obviously I wasn’t super geeked about the red flag scenario,” Rahal said. “You know, to me, racing is racing. I would have liked just to finish the thing off obviously. When we went red, I knew that the lap car, (Ryan) Hunter-Reay, was going to be moved out, that would put Newgarden right behind me. Not that I felt threatened by him, honestly. I knew what his pace was all day. The guys were keeping me up to date.
“Obviously, we would have liked to have finished the thing. We pretty much dominated the day again. It would have been nice to just close the thing out. We got it done anyway. Had he gotten a run on me, it was going to be very hard to pass me those last two laps. Wasn’t that close.”
Newgarden said he didn’t think he’d be able to pass Rahal on the restart, which came after an 18minute delay.
“Honestly, no,” Newgarden said about whether he thought he could catch Rahal. “If he would have done something stupid, I would have been like, ‘I had you.’ He didn’t do anything bad. Like I said, it was going to be difficult to do anything on that restart. (Will) Power had twice as much ‘push to pass’ than I did. He couldn’t do much with me because with two laps to go, there’s so much pickup on the tires, you’re trying to hold on to the thing at that point.”
The red flag came out after Spencer Pigot lost turbo on lap 67.
Newgarden was second and Will Power finished third, both for Team Penske. Team owner Roger Penske brought IndyCar racing back to Belle Isle, and this race weekend is very special to him. Indianapolis 500 winner Takuma Sato, who started on the pole, finished fourth.
Honda has won five of the year’s eight races.
Rahal got grief from some of his fellow drivers after saying Friday that he thought he had a car capable of dominating if it ran up front. He backed up that talk over two full races.
Rahal, and his father, Bobby, credited the strategy of staying out one lap later than Sato on the first pit stop as the key to Sunday’s win.
“I was just pleased with our performance to get by HunterReay at the start to save a ton of fuel, to be able to go longer than Sato, to do those two phenomenal laps, and to come out of that pit sequence five seconds ahead is a huge accomplishment for me on a personal level,” Rahal said. “That was a good sequence there.”
It was similar to the strategy the pair used in winning Saturday in the first race of the doubleheader in dominating fashion.
Rahal opted for a two-pit strategy both days, while other competitors, notably Helio Castroneves, who started second Saturday, planned for three pit stops. Rahal was able to stretch his fuel and build a big lead in both races, a key factor that allowed him to pull off the sweep.
In the opening race, Rahal took the lead for good on lap 51, after Scott Dixon pitted on lap 50. Dixon, driving with an injured foot after a horrific crash in the Indy 500 the previous Sunday, closed that lead to 6.1 seconds over the next 10 laps, but Rahal had too much left.
Dixon finished sixth Sunday and retained the points lead. Rahal moved up to sixth.
Bobby Rahal referred to it as a dream weekend.
“The car was obviously really good,” Bobby Rahal said. “Graham obviously did a great job.”
Graham Rahal now will go to Texas Motor Speedway to try to win a third race in a row. He’s the defending champion there.
“As I said to you all last night, these things don’t happen very often,” Rahal said of getting his fifth and sixth career wins. “Through the ups and downs of my career, when you get a chance to win a race, you never take it for granted. So it’s pretty special for me.
“The guys are going to certainly feel good going into Texas next week, a place we know we can win at. Hopefully we can get it done again.”