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FeedSports: Family in the Fastlane
Graham Rahal follows Bobby’s fatherly advice at 220 mph
PHOTO BY WILL SHILLING
Bobby Rahal’s nickname for his son Graham back in his formative years was Grammy, but the father said acquaintances and business partners came up with their own.
“They called him ‘The Shadow,’ ” Bobby said, laughing. “When he was young he’d go with me to meetings or dinners sometimes, and he’d sit right next to me and not say a word. But you could tell he was paying attention.”
Or counting the minutes until the next time he could plant his right foot on the gas pedal of his racing kart. If there’d been two seats in Bobby Rahal’s race car, he likely would have had a constant companion in the latter days of the racing career from which he retired in 1998.
For as his son said, driving fast is in his blood.
“It’s been a passion of mine since I was a little kid,” said Graham, who graduated from karts to race cars at age 15. “And maybe more than anything else, I love the automobile, I love cars.
“So for me, to get the ultimate joy from that is to drive one of these things fast. And when you put together a good lap, there’s nothing that feels more rewarding.”
It would be easy to inject the phrase “like father like son” right about here, but not quite yet.
Bobby, driving for the Hilliard-based Truesports team owned by Red Roof Inns founder and sportsman Jim Trueman, rose to fame with a stirring victory in the 1986 Indianapolis 500, dedicating it to Trueman, who succumbed to cancer 11 days later. Bobby went on to win three open-wheel championships, including in 1992, his inaugural year as a team owner and driver. And his team—HQed in the same shop that Trueman built—rose to win the 2004 Indy 500 with Buddy Rice at the wheel.
Thus far, Graham hasn’t come close to stepping out of that shadow, but his father says give him time.
“It seems like he’s been doing this for a long time, and I guess he has, but he’s only 23,” Bobby, 59, said of Graham’s five seasons in IndyCar. “I didn’t even get in until I was 29. Graham is so much more advanced than I was at his age it’s not even funny.”
Graham, a devout Ohio State and Columbus Blue Jackets fan, is not without accomplishment. In 2008 he became at 19 the youngest race winner in IndyCar history. He was third in the Indy 500 in 2011. And last month he seemed on his way to victory at Texas Motor Speedway before banging the wall with two laps left.
“It’s tough to win races,” Bobby said, “but for the most part he’s been at the front end of the grid, and that’s where you have to be.”
When Bobby speaks of being proud of his son, he’s talking about more than driving a race car. Graham is bright, thoughtful, articulate, not afraid to speak his mind, and embracing with the fans. A lot of those traits he no doubt inherited from his outgoing mother Debi, too.
As disappointed as he was in hitting the wall at Texas, for example, moments after climbing from the car he took blame for the mistake, and said, “This might haunt me forever.”
But he was over it the next day, tweeting about the bus trip for fans to the ensuing race in Milwaukee he and girlfriend Laken Kurtz arranged to benefit his Graham Rahal Foundation. Now living in Carmel, Ind., to be close to his Indy-based Chip Ganassi Racing team, Graham has parlayed his driving career into aiding youth charities when he can.
“It’s important to me to be in touch with these fans, because they’re really what make it possible for us to do what we love to do,” Graham said.
Just like his father, who started the Bobby Rahal Foundation in the 1980s as a way to fund charitable endeavors. Bobby has rekindled that this year with a high-end automobile show at Easton on Aug. 1, with proceeds to benefit the Buckeye Ranch for challenged youths.
Graham learned early that his father, who also owns multiple car dealerships primarily in Pennsylvania, was more than just a race car driver. Not that he immediately applied that wisdom in his own life as he was growing up in New Albany.
“As a kid there’s a time when you think you know it all. I think that’s natural,” Graham said. “And then you start to realize that everything Dad and Mom once said was right. For me in my career, it is amazing how obvious that really is.”
Now very much his own man, he is the first to admit there is a lot of his old man in him, too.
“I mean, everything I do, I’m thinking, ‘Well, Dad once said’ whatever about that situation, and nine times out of 10 that comes true,” Graham said. “So I always lean on him for advice, because it’s some of the best advice you can get from anybody.”
Yet as Graham progressed from adolescence into his teenage years and beyond, his father wanted him to do things more and more on his own. Bobby had the wherewithal to line his son’s path with guaranteed rides in race cars fielded by his Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team, but instead he pushed him to earn rides elsewhere.
The exception was the Indianapolis 500 in 2010—a season in which Graham was without a full-time ride due to a sponsor’s bail—when Graham drove for Bobby’s team because the former champion thought he needed to keep intact the participation streak in the world’s most famous race. Otherwise, Graham has been a competitor against his father’s drivers.
“It was important, I think, for Graham to prove himself, which he has done, without having that thought hanging over his career that he’s only here because his father made it happen,” Bobby said.
But having Rahal as a last name hasn’t hurt, Graham said.
“My dad is one of the most well-respected guys there is in this paddock, if not the most well-respected guy,” Graham said. “So certainly I try to learn as much as I can from him.”
Emulation is the sincerest form of flattery for any son, but for Graham, following in his father’s footsteps means donning a fire resistant jumpsuit, gloves and balaclava, strapping on a crash helmet and neck restraint, then being belted into a 650-horsepower machine capable of going through the corners at Indianapolis Motor Speedway at more than 220 mph.
“It’s a rush,” Graham said.
It’s also extremely dangerous. That was brought home again for the whole world to see in the season-ending race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last year. The 15-car pileup that brought that race to a screeching halt featured smoke, fire, grinding collisions and two cars flying.
One of the fliers was two-time Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon. Struck in the head by a post holding up the catch fence above the wall, he was for all intents and purposes dead at the scene. For those watching it raised lots of questions, one of which was: Does such an event cause a young man like Graham to second-guess his career choice?
“No,” Graham said.
Just once in your life, though, sit in the stands on the outside of turn one at Indy and witness the breathtaking spectacle of 33 cars suddenly coming to full song and diving into that lefthander at more than 220 mph, and disappearing around the bend almost faster than your mind can compute it. It is danger at its most magnificent.
But for those on the inside looking out, the perspective is so much different, especially for those who have a father who raced at the highest level. And remember that part about Graham hitting the wall at Texas with two laps to go? Well, he kept his foot on the gas and still finished second.
“You know what, we were born to do this,” Graham said. “I tell people all the time, I could get killed driving home tonight. I could be walking across a street downtown and get swiped. These things can happen to anybody at any time.
“Maybe it’s a bad way to look at it, but sometimes maybe if it’s your time, it’s your time. I don’t know what other way to look at it.”
If that’s cold-blooded, so be it, he said. But Graham didn’t simply dismiss the Wheldon death with a shrug. He immediately offered up one of his helmets in an online auction, the proceeds to benefit Wheldon’s widow, Susie, and their two young boys, Sebastian and Oliver.
The helmet fetched $12,600. Not only that, it inspired others in the racing community—including his father—to put cherished items up for bid. The money generated grew to more than $625,000.
“For anybody who has a father that does this sport, you think, ‘We’re going to be taken care of,’ ” Graham said. “But when things change that suddenly it’s a wakeup call, and it puts your life in a direction you probably never anticipated.
“I just wanted to help out.”
So much for being in the shadow.
