Bobby Rahal documentary to debut Friday on FS1

A documentary on the life of 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner and three-time CART IndyCar Series champion Bobby Rahal will make its global debut Friday on FOX Sports 1.

Made by Chassy Media, a one-hour version of “Bobby Rahal: True American Racer,” is set to air at 7:30pm ET and will re-air multiple times afterwards throughout May to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Rahal’s Indy 500 victory.

Filmed, directed and edited by Travis Long, the project that began in 2022 – and includes the contributions of fellow directors Scott Borchetta and Nate Adams – has been an all-consuming affair.

“I was looking for the real story of Bobby Rahal,” Long told RACER. “He was always up front. He's always just qualifying up front and running up front and so maybe he didn’t come to mind as the first person to do a documentary on, but once you start digging into his life, it’s just so fascinating and that’s what drew me to this.

“His emergence in Formula Atlantic, and then all the endurance racing, and all the ways that he built his team, and that's why he was up front. He had such a big hand in just about everything he did, and that’s how he became so successful in so many areas. And it’s still going on, 50 years later. When we interviewed him, it was a seven-hour interview over two days.”

The abbreviated version for FS1 covers Rahal’s formative years through his triumphant Indy 500 win with dear friend Jim Trueman, whose battle with cancer met an unfortunate end shortly after their grand triumph at the Speedway.

“We had a lot of people who wanted to talk about Bobby; Al Unser Jr., Brian Redman, Bryan Herta and so many more. I counted up the other day and we have 25 interviews and over 30 hours of footage, and for this cut, it's down to 44 minutes, so you had to sacrifice a lot of good stuff to get it down to that amount for TV,” Long said.

“It’s just been a long project, and it's had the biggest support from Scott Borchetta and Nate Adams. This doesn't get made without them. We've been out at a lot of racetracks, gotten a lot of footage, a lot of stuff that's going to be in the longer cut that didn't make it into this one that’s Indy 500-centric.

"It’s the big event of the year; Indy is like our Christmas, so I’m glad we’re able to show the first version of this around Bobby’s anniversary of the win. But we’ve been working on this since 2022; I almost don't remember working on anything else, so I’m also glad it’s getting close to being done and then we can move on to the next racing documentary.”

The full-length version of the film, which spans the entirety of Rahal’s ongoing career, will be released later in the year.