Graham Rahal’s rookie year of Champ Car World Series continued this weekendwith a return to the USA streets after a string of Canadian events. San Jose hosted thechampionship for the third year, giving the young Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing driver another topten result with a sixth place finish.
The lead up to today’s Grand Prix of San Jose race began with Rahal posting seventh fastest timein the opening practice session. However, it was all change in the second session with the 18-year-old rookie running in the top three until a brush with the wall ended his session prematurely.
“I just brushed the wall, ” said Rahal. “I slid off into the run off area and they towed me back to thepits minus my front wing, but there was too much damage to get back out until afternoonqualifying. ” His day continued to prove challenging, with a second brush of the wall in afternoonqualifying which ruined one of his hot laps and resulted in 13thfastest in provisional qualifying, despite having a car which Rahal believed could have topped the time sheets.
In the final day of qualifying the Newman/Haas/Lanigan racer showed his maturity and ability towithstand the pressures of top level racing as he put his disappointment of Friday’s qualifyingbehind him and bounced back to run quickest in both practice sessions. He improved on his provisional qualifying to be fifth quickest in the afternoon, lining up sixth on the grid, with team mateSebastien Bourdais claiming a front row spot having topped qualifying on Friday. The top tenpositions were separated by less than three tenths of a second, demonstrating the closecompetition that characterises the Champ Car series.
The race began cleanly for Rahal, with the rookie making a good start pulling up beside Neel Jani, but playing it conservatively he backed out of the position to avoid a possible pileup later during theopening lap and dropped back a place, regaining it with Bourdais slowing as the cars lined upbehind the safety car after a multi-car incident on the opening lap.
A further incident up front just as the field were to return to green flag racing promoted Rahal tofourth place. He ran in this position for the first stint, conserving fuel along with many of the field. With this strategy he was unable to hold off Alex Tagliani, who was able to sneak through to stealhis position and drop Rahal to fifth, from which he pitted in the first round of pit stops.
An unfortunate stall and delay in getting out of the pits for Rahal dropped him to 13thplace after allthe field had refuelled, and his battle to regain a points-paying position was on. Undaunted the Medi| Zone driver set about chasing down the field and he quickly pushed hard, passing Alex Figge andBruno Junqueira en route to tenth spot. Jan Heylen dropping out and Paul Tracy slowing on trackpromoted him to eighth and with a full course caution called for this, Rahal was in the pits immediately they opened.
An excellent pitstop from the Newman/Haas/Lanigan No. 2 Medi | Zone car crew promoted Rahal toseventh place and on a return to green flag racing it was a straight fight to the finish for the fieldwith 25 minutes of the race remaining. Rahal moved to sixth place as the racing resumed, and rancleanly to the chequered flag to finish in that position.
He said of San Jose, “When following the leaders initially the car felt good and we were able tokeep with them; we posted third quickest lap and that was quite late in the race when the car wasn’thandling as well as the start, with a steering race problem. It was unfortunate that we had the stallin the pits, I just don’t know why that happened, although I don’t think it was anything that I did; wethink it could be a torque position slot issue. We’ll look at the data and I’m sure we’ll figure it out. We salvaged sixth place so that’s good for our overall standings, but of course I’m disappointed as without that we could have been on for another podium.
”After six events in eight weeks Rahal will have a weekend off, returning to competition for round tenof the Champ Car World Series at the Road America road course, Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin
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