IndyCar: Graham Rahal – “There’s no excuse”

Graham Rahal has everything he needs to succeed this year in the Verizon IndyCar Series. Strong budget? Check. Strong engineering team? Check. Strong management team? Check. Strong mechanics and pit crew? Check once again.

All he needs to do is produce over 18 rounds and the championship will be his for the taking... If only it was that easy. Adding the National Guard, engineer Bill Pappas and manager Mitch Davis to Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing's infrastructure will definitely boost Graham's odds of having a successful season, but as the architect of his own destiny, the 25-year-old knows he'll also need to raise his game if he's to reach his full potential.

"The biggest thing for me is just simply trying to focus on my highs and lows," Rahal told RACER. "What do I do well, what do I do poorly? And trying to improve those things. What I've done well in the past is that I feel like I've raced extremely well. I don't think that I'm typically ever anybody that comes off overly confident, particularly the last two years. One thing I always have felt good about, if you look at like a Long Beach last year we started 11th, finished second in passed our way all the way up through there. And it wasn't a matter of luck. If you look at Baltimore, I made a mistake in qualifying. Sure enough in the race we passed our way all the way up through and ended up leading the thing."

If Rahal's most adept when the green flag waves, what about the basics of how he drives through each turn?

"I feel like the racing side of my craft is generally pretty good. But I feel my biggest focus in testing, my biggest focus with Bill has been asking what part of my driving style is positive and what is negative? And the one thing I really focused on last year was trying to get off the corners better because that's where I lost a lot of time. Obviously, come the open test at Barber, frankly, that was my strength. And my weakness is getting into the corner.

"So I've focused on a lot of driving style technique. I've been working with [RLLR driver coach] Mike Zimicki on overlaying video and things like that to see where the positives have come. Because frankly, this car doesn't fit my driving style. And it hasn't and so I've had to adapt considerably to try to make it work in many respects."

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Like fellow IndyCar driver Marco Andretti, Rahal finds himself needing to adapt his driving style to suit the Dallara DW12 chassis, rather than finding the car to be a perfect tool for him to express what comes naturally. As it turns out, these sons of Indy car champions, who fans would like to see go head-to-head more frequently, are trying to overcome the same exact driving tendencies that have kept them from achieving better results with the DW12.

"I like to brake extremely late, roll a lot of speed to the center of the corner and get off kind of normal," Rahal explained. "Well, the problem is, it used to work when there was higher horsepower because you couldn't just stand on the throttle mid-corner and drive it off really hard – you had to attack on entry and give up the exit or else you'd light up the tires on the throttle. My style has to be toned back from trying not to brake as late, trying not to roll as much speed, trying to focus on starting to pick up a maintenance throttle and get off the corner starting about mid corner. And that's not the way my brain is programmed.

"I've had to kind of re-adapt to a certain extent to fit this car and to fit this tire. And that's been a big challenge. I think anybody that's a part of this sport knows a driver that's come up and driven a certain way for the last 10 years, or whatever I've done in junior formulas and everything else, and then all of a sudden you totally have to change. It's not an easy thing to do."

Making improvements in qualifying will be the first order of business for Rahal in the Honda-powered No. 15, and if all goes well there, he'll have less passing to do when it's time to go racing.

"I've been focused on qualifying, frankly," he confirmed. "I feel like if I can qualify up toward the front I could would a lot of races. And a lot of people would think well, how does he have confidence in that? But rarely do we go backward unless we have issues. So I'm primarily focused on qualifying and getting the most out of myself when it comes to putting the lap together. Qualifying used to be my strength. If you look at 2009, it was my strength. Racing was my weakness. And I think that's done a complete 180, so I have to change to make that work."

Coming off of a disappointing season where he finished 18th in the standings, expectations are sky high for Rahal in 2014. They've always been high, frankly, but for the first time in a good while, Graham has everything he could ask for except, possibly, the full-time presence of a teammate in a second RLLR entry. He'll have veteran Oriol Servia for at least four races this year, but Rahal knows he'll bear all of the pressure to deliver.

"There's no excuse," he acknowledged. "I think it is going to take some time. Like I said, at Barber, I showed up with these driving changes in mind and sure enough I had almost corrected them too far, so it isn't going to happen overnight. Do I expect magic immediately? No, but I expect that with the whole group that we have, I expect the team's performance, mine included, but also the team's performance to be significantly better.

"Do I think we're an Andretti Autosport yet? Do I think that we are a Penske or a Ganassi yet? Probably not. But I think that we're getting closer – and I know what I need to do to handle my part of the equation."