Graham Rahal, No. 02 McDonald’s Dallara/Honda/Firestone: “It was not a good day for us. Others that were in the championship battle with us had problems and we couldn’t capitalize because the car wasn’t good. We literally had to finish the race because of the championship but it was challenging. The car was so loose. If I was on my own, the car was okay but if I got even remotely close to someone the car went incredibly loose. It was the hardest race of my life because I was holding my breath every single corner of every lap. There is so little track time and coming here to put it all together on a race weekend puts too much pressure on us. We’re going to keep working hard and the McDonald’s team will be back at the front. We made huge gains from last year to this year but we can’t make the same amount of gains from this year to next because we’re already close now that we can’t expect the same amount. All we need to do is make some gains and we’ll be right in the hunt week-in and week-out.”
FAST FACTS: Finished seventh in the standings with 385 points in his second season in the IndyCar series…Finished 11th in his first race here. In 2008, he missed the season-opening race here due to a crash in T2 on the final day of a two-day test here on Tuesday night of race week. The team was unable to repair the car in time for race weekend and Rahal watched from the spotter’s stand….Highest start this season is two poles (St. Pete/street & Kansas/oval) and highest finish is third place at Richmond and Japan.







