Interview With Graham Rahal Part-3

Interview With Graham Rahal Part-3

Apr 16, 2008

IndyCar

Question: quite comfortable already in the IRL on the road and street courses, how do you feel about ovals do you feel like you need more testing and will you have an opportunity to do more testing before the next race?

GRAHAM RAHAL: Well, you know, surprisingly, even on the oval, I felt very comfortable. I went out and right away, testing at Homestead my fifth lap was 205.9 or something. I was talking to Will Power after and he was telling me how he’s out there pushing hard and he had already done like 60 laps and comes behind me and can’t get by me and he had seen me just come out of the pit.

You know, I felt fine on the oval, and our cars were good. My incident was unfortunate because it was a situation where no one else had run where I was and since everybody was out there trying to see how quick their cars could go, you know, we are running around the bottom and when I passed Servia and crashed, I had to go up high.

So I feel fine on the oval. It’s different, obviously, because on an oval, they set the car up where the steering wheel is tilted right and your head is crooked to the left. So coming out of the pits, quite a different feeling, but I’ve got no problem with the car. It’s a nice car to drive and it’s different, but you know, it’s just fine.

Question:you talk about the rivalry between the Champ car and the IRL drivers and if you think that’s good for the sport?

GRAHAM RAHAL: The media is not going to let go of and we need to face that and say, well, the Champ Car drivers ought to kick all the IRL drivers’ (butts) and you look at it six of the Top 10 drivers were Champ Car drivers.
In order to help this sport continue to grow, it needs to stop, because we are all here, we are all working together. We want to make the sport successful, because at the end of the day, for us people that started in open wheel racing, love open wheel racing and want to continue to see open wheel racing succeed and get back to where it used to be, it can no longer be Champ Car versus IRL. It has to just be IndyCar Series.
The drivers inside look, if you want to go Champ Car versus IRL, all of the top Indy car drivers are from Champ Car, so you’re really not you know, it’s not Champ Car versus IRL because all of us really started in Champ Car, so it’s a different you know, I just think it’s got to end.

But like I said it’s not going to any time soon. And I think maybe once the Champ Car team starts to be very competitive on the ovals, people will drop it a little, and on the road courses, it’s one series now and that’s how we need to go forward.