By David Morgan, Associate Editor
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Graham Rahal was prepared for a battle heading into Sunday’s Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix at Barber Motorsports Park and stayed in the fight throughout the day to bring home his first podium finish in nearly three years.
Rahal equaled his best qualifying effort of the season with a third-place start and came into the day confident that the speed in his No. 15 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Honda would carry though to race day.
And it did.
Running second to Alex Palou for the majority of the day, Rahal held steady among the leaders throughout the race until the last run when he was surpassed by Christian Lundgaard to fall to third place.
Despite a late charge from David Malukas to attempt to knock him off the podium, Rahal would keep hold of that third-place position and scored his first podium finish since the fall of 2023 when he finished second on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
“It’s a great reward for the guys and gals. Everybody has worked so hard to be back here. Heard all the noise and BS that we get to hear all the time,” said Rahal.
“All weekend the car was in really good shape, very, very competitive, very comfortable. The race is actually the most challenging it was. It was extremely stable. In the race, as you guys could see, I was losing the rear a lot no matter what I felt like I could do on tire degradation. That’s been our Achilles’ heel so far this year. We’ve got some work to do.”
He added that despite the late charge from Malukas, he was positive that he could hold him off down the stretch, noting that if things had played out a bit different, he could have kept Lundgaard at bay as well.
“I mean, we were quicker than David all day. He did make a good charge at the end,” said Rahal.
“I wasn’t so worried about him. I think I could have held Christian off. His strength was my weakness. Everywhere else we could pull him a little bit. I was dying in turn two and three. That was the best part of the track he had. Unfortunately, those two just didn’t blend very well.
“We did the best that we could. That’s life. He was obviously on a charge and we had done a few more laps than him on those tires. I knew it was going to be a battle till the end. That’s the way it goes.”
With Sunday’s result now in the bag, Rahal explained that he and the team will now go back and see how they can replicate it and keep things rolling for the remainder of the season.
“I’m super happy for everybody on the 15. Great pit stops, great strategy with Bryan. We’ll carry this momentum into the break here a little bit and get ready for Long Beach,” said Rahal.
“It’s a good relief this early in the year to have a good result. Now our job is to go analyze and figure out why. What changes did we make to put our car so much further into the window than most other road course races and how can we take that to the GP and Indy in particular?”
He also explained that he hoped his return to the podium would also tone down some of the noise and silence his haters on the Internet, though he wasn’t exactly confident the message would get across to them.
“I think you guys know what I mean about that. I don’t have to say a whole lot. There’s enough bullshit out there that I got to deal with,” Rahal said with a laugh.
“It’s nice. It’s nice. I’ll still hear it. It’s funny, you read Twitter every day, He can’t qualify. I qualified in the second-row last week. Just shut up. There’s a whole lot of dumb asses out in this world right now. Get to live with it. Pardon my French.”
Rahal now sits 12th in the standings heading to the next event on the schedule at Long Beach (April 19 – 5:30 pm ET on FOX).
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