Graham Rahal Survives Crazy Night for Fourth at Texas

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor

FORT WORTH, Texas – Fresh from dominating the Verizon IndyCar Series Detroit doubleheader, Graham Rahal hung on in a wild race at Texas Motor Speedway to claim fourth place in the Rainguard Water Sealers 600.

The 28-year-old stayed near the front of the pack after starting 11th. Though Rahal failed to lead the race at any point, he did something that proved very hard for his fellow drivers, he stayed out of trouble.

“I’m happy we’re safe and out of here in one piece,” an elated Rahal declared immediately after the race.

“A lot of guys were taking a lot of chances, pushing things to the edge a little bit too much.”

Though the fourth place result is good for his championship chances after the back to back victories in Detroit, Graham was clearly disappointed he wasn’t able to do more, but remained grateful he even made it to the end of race that saw only six cars finish on the lead lap.

“Obviously I’m disappointed in myself to stall on that last stop. You know if I look at it I’m probably lucky. It kind of cleared me of the incident (referring to Takuma Sato’s late race crash on lap 244 of 248 with Scott Dixon).

“We struggled with track position all night, we struggled to make it up in the pits too much, so we were kind of steady…it was tough. We got lucky to miss and avoid a lot of those big crashes because they were, all of them were right in front of me.”

Looking ahead, he is optimistic about the series next stop at Road America as he tries to crack the top five in the championship standings, sitting three points of the spot that’s occupied by Will Power.

“Hopefully we can go in there, coming off three top 5’s in a row and have a good points day there,” he added. “It’s tough right now, we gotta gain all the points we can and go from there.”