Let’s start with points. Rahal is a career-best second in the Verizon IndyCar Series standings, 42 behind Juan Pablo Montoya.
The 26-year-old is a month removed from his second series win. The first came in 2008.
Surrounded by Penske and Ganassi drivers, Rahal is the only Honda driver in the top five.
Don’t forget that Rahal is all by himself. Where others have data from two to three teammates, every week the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver goes once more into the breach, a one-man army.
All of it has Rahal thinking more like a founding member of “The Goonies.”
“We’ve got to have this never-say-die attitude,” Rahal said Tuesday in a media teleconference. “If I have a race-winning car, we have to win. We can’t finish second or third. If we have a 10th-place car, we have to find a way to finish fifth.”
Rahal and the team behind his No. 15 Honda have been doing just that. In a year where Honda has been lagging behind the Chevrolets of Penske and Ganassi in grasping the new aero kits, Rahal’s Honda is the only that’s been at the front at the front consistently through nearly all 13 races, earning a career-high five podiums.
The exceptions: being penalized at St. Petersburg, an unavoidable wreck in Detroit race one and then the Firestone 600 at Texas, the only race Rahal believes the team actually made a wrong decision, which resulted in a 15th-place finish.
“We took for granted the amount of downforce we thought we needed and we just didn’t put enough on,” Rahal said. “We didn’t have the data to know otherwise, versus the teams that got it right were multi-car teams.”
Those multi-car teams get data from everywhere.
“Every lap that gets turned throughout a practice, qualifying, a race, they’re getting four times the amount of data for every single lap that they do,” Rahal said. “Without a doubt, that’s a huge advantage.”
For awhile RLL Racing was getting the wrong information from the wrong people. The weekend of the team’s “one little-slip up” at Texas, Rahal shared one example of how the team had been led down the wrong path before this renaissance year.
“Last year we were convinced by an engineer that we had to go one way on dampers, so we spent a quarter of a million dollars buying all those dampers and found out what we had before was better,” the driver said.
“Unfortunately, that was kind of the directions we’ve been led in before, but we’re back to where the Rahal Letterman team has been for a long time.”
Since the dismal visit to Texas, Rahal has finished in the top 10 in all four races, including his Fontana win and bouncing back from multiple near-disasters at Iowa to finish fourth.
During that stretch, Rahal’s father, team co-owner Bobby Rahal, hasn’t been anywhere near the track.
“My dad’s been on vacation the last two weeks. I haven’t even heard from him. Hasn’t been at the last three races. Maybe that’s the way he wants it to be,” Rahal said. “He kind of just said to me, ‘I don’t know, maybe I should just not show up the rest of the time. If this is the way things are going to go, maybe you’re best on your own.'”
He won’t be on his own this weekend. With the IndyCar series rolling into Mid-Ohio, the family’s home track, the elder Rahal will be back to watch his son kick off what could be the final leg of a championship season.
“To me, that track, the connection I have with that venue, is really a big part of why I am doing what I am and what I love,” Rahal said.
“Being in this position, in a position to win a championship, is something I truly never dreamed of. Hard to believe we’re in the battle now.”
(Editor’s note: This story on the Heart of Racing sports cars shootout for women is one in an occasional Motorsports Talk series focusing on women in racing during March, which is Women’s History Month.)
Heart of Racing driver and team manager Ian James says his daughter, Gabby, isn’t so interested in auto racing. But she is interested (as a New York-based journalist) in writing about the sport’s efforts and growth in gender equality
It’s a topic that also was brought up by James’ wife, Kim.
“They’re always saying, ‘Hey, you manage all these guys, and you help them, so why not a woman?’ ” Ian James told NBC Sports. “And I feel like there are a lot of women that haven’t had a fair crack at it in sports car racing.
“Our whole DNA at Heart of Racing is we give people opportunities in all types of situations where there’s been crew personnel or drivers. And I felt like we hadn’t really addressed the female driver situation. I felt like there was a void to give somebody a chance to really prove themselves.”
During the offseason, the team took a major step toward remedying that.
Hannah Grisham at the Heart of Racing shootout (Mike Levitt/LAT)
Heart of Racing held its first female driver shootout last November at the APEX Motor Club in Phoenix, Arizona, to select two women who will co-drive an Aston Martin Vantage GT4 in the SRO SprintX Championship.
The season will begin this weekend at Sonoma Raceway with Hannah Grisham and Rianna O’Meara-Hunt behind the wheel. The team also picked a third driver, 17-year-old Annie Rhule, for a 2023 testing program.
The Phoenix audition included 10 finalists who were selected from 130 applicants to the program, which has been fully underwritten by Heart of Racing’s sponsors.
“We didn’t want it to be someone who just comes from a socio-economic background that could afford to do it on their own course,” James said. “We can pick on pure talent. We’re committed to three years to do this and see if we can find the right person. I’m very hopeful.”
So is Grisham, a Southern California native who has been racing since she was 6 in go-karts and since has won championships in Mazda and Miata ladder series. She has several victories in the World Racing League GP2 (an amateur sports car endurance series). The last two years, Grisham has worked as a test driver for the Pirelli tire company (she lives near Pirelli’s U.S. headquarters in Rome, Georgia, and tests about 30 times a year).
Starting with the Sonoma during SprintX event weekends (which feature races Saturday and Sunday), she will split the Heart of Racing car with O’Meara-Hunt (a New Zealand native she got to know at the shootout).
“It’s huge; the biggest opportunity I’ve had in this sport,” Grisham, 23, told NBC Sports. “Now it’s up to me to perform how I know I can. But I’m super lucky to be with such an amazing team and have a good teammate. The Heart of Racing has a family vibe and energy to it that’s really amazing. It’s super exciting. It’s hard to put into words.”
Grisham is hopeful that a strong performance eventually could lead to a full-time ride with Heart of Racing. The team has full-time entries in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and won the GTD category of the 2023 Rolex 24 at Daytona with the No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 piloted by James, Darren Turner, Roman DeAngelis and Marco Sorensen.
James said “there’s no guarantee” of placement in an IMSA entry for Grisham and O’Meara-Hunt, but “if they prove themselves, we’ll continue to help them throughout their career and our team. The GT3 program is an obvious home for that. If they get the opportunity and don’t quite make it, we’ll be looking for the next two. The next three years, we’ll cycle through drivers until we find the right one.”
Grisham described the two-day shootout as a friendly but intense environment. After a day of getting acclimated to their cars, drivers qualified on new tires the second day and then did two 25-minute stints to simulate a race.
Hannah Grisham reviews data with Heart of Racing sports car driver Gray Newell during the team’s shootout last November (Mike Levitt/LAT).
“Everyone was super nice,” she said. “Once everyone gets in the car, it’s a different level. A different switch gets turned on. Everyone was super nice; everyone was quick. I feel we had an adequate amount of seat time, which is definitely helpful.
“It’s always cool to meet more women in the sport because there’s not too many of us, even though there’s more and more. It’s always cool to meet really talented women, especially there were so many from all over the world.”
IMSA has celebrated female champions and race winners, notably Katherine Legge (who is running GTD full time this season with Sheena Monk for Gradient Racing). The field at Sebring and Daytona also included the Iron Dames Lamborghini (a female-dominated team).
The Heart of Racing’s female driver shootout drew interested candidates from around the world (Mike Levitt/LAT).
James believes “a breakout female driver will be competing with the best of them” in the next five years as gender barriers slowly recede in motorsports.
“It’s been a male-dominated sport,” James said. “It’s still a very minute number of women drivers compared to the guys. I’m sure back in the day there were physical hurdles about it that were judged. But now the cars are not very physical to drive, and it’s more about technique and mental strength and stuff like that, and there’s no reason a girl shouldn’t do just as well as a guy. What we’re just trying to achieve is that there isn’t an obvious barrier to saying ‘Hey, I can’t hire a guy or a girl.’ We just want to put girls in front of people and our own program that are legitimate choices going forward for people.”
“There’s been some really good female drivers, but a lot of them just haven’t been able to sustain it, and a lot of that comes from sponsorship. I think (with the shootout), there’s no pressure of raising money and worrying about crash damage. We’ve taken care of all that so they can really focus on the job at hand.”
Funding always has been a hurdle for Grisham, who caught the racing bug from her father, Tom, an off-road driver who raced the Baja 1000 several times.
“I don’t come from a lot of money by any means,” she said. “So since a young age, I’ve always had to find sponsorships and get people to help me, whether it was buying tires, paying for entry fees, paying for the shipment of a car to an actual race. Literally knocking on the doors of people or businesses in my town.
“So yeah, it’s definitely something I’ve always struggled with and held me back because the sport revolves so much around money. So again to get this opportunity is insane.”
Rianna O’Meara-Hunt was one of two women selected by the Heart of Racing to drive in the SRO SprintX Championship this year (Mike Levitt/LAT).
Grisham credits racing pioneer Lyn St. James (an Indy 500 veteran and sports car champion) as a role model who has helped propel her career. She was hooked by the sights, smells and sounds of racing but also its competitive fire.
“There’s a zone you get in, that subconscious state of mind when you’re driving. It’s like addictive almost. I love it. Also I’m just a very competitive person as I think most race car drivers are.
“For sure I want to stay with the Heart of Racing. Obviously, I’m still getting to know everyone, but it’s a super family vibe. That’s how I grew up in the sport with just my dad and I wrenching on the cars. That’s what I love about this sport is all the amazing people you meet. And I think this is one of the most promising teams in this country. For sure, I want to learn as much as I can from them and hopefully continue. I feel so lucky and grateful to be one of those chosen.”
