BY BRIAN D. SMITH

Of the six children of Bobby Rahal, only one bears the name of a famous race driver — son Graham, named after legendary British champion Graham Hill.

Maybe Bobby sensed something no ultrasound could: That Graham would be the only child to follow in his tire tracks. This month, 35-year-old Graham Robert Rahal hopes to qualify for his 17th Indianapolis 500, a race his father won in 1986.

Bobby Rahal takes no credit for clairvoyance, but he’s happy to explain his admiration for Hill, who drove to victory lane in 1966. “He might not have had the natural talent of a Jimmy Clark” — another of Bobby’s heroes, who won Indy in 1965 — “but he just had that work ethic and got things done.”

Indeed, Graham Hill remains the only driver in history to capture the so-called Triple Crown of Motorsport, which in his
day comprised the Indy 500, the Monaco Grand Prix, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race.

Graham Rahal, meanwhile, just wants a less soul-crushing Indy 500 than he experienced last year. Driving for his father’s team, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, he overcame mechanical issues to qualify for the 33rd and final position in the starting grid. But in the closing moments of time trials, teammate Jack Harvey ousted him with a four-lap average that was just .007 mph faster.

Afterward, in an emotional scene witnessed on national television, Graham sat alone and dejected on the sidepod of his blue-and-white No. 15 car, head buried in his hands. Then, suddenly, he was surrounded by his consoling wife, Courtney Force, and two young daughters as he wiped away tears, mindful that he would sit out the 500 for the first time since 2008.

Or would he? The next day, a practice accident sent driver Stefan Wilson to the hospital and his team, Dreyer & Reinbolt Racing, searching for a replacement to drive the backup car in the race. “That evening, I got the call,” said Rahal. “I was in Dreyer’s at midnight.”

The two teams came to terms, allowing him to drive in the Indy 500. Rahal called it an honor, adding, “My thoughts are with Stef Wilson. This isn’t the way we wanted to get into the race.”

But his good fortune took a sharp U-turn on Race Day. “Drivers, start your engines,” came the familiar command, but Rahal’s engine wouldn’t start. A faulty battery, which had to be replaced, put him two laps down before he ever got the car in motion. Rahal finished 22nd, still managing to overtake one-third of the field despite his disadvantage.

And so it went at the 107th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

When Courtney Force offers her husband a comforting hug after a tough day at the track, she knows firsthand the demands of high-stakes competition and the pressures of living in the shadow of
a famous father.

Like her husband, Force not only grew up in a famous motorsports family, but took up the same profession as her dad, right down to his choice of fast cars. The youngest daughter of drag racing superstar John Force, a 16-time National Hot Rod Association champion in the Funny Car class, she is the winningest female driver in the same class. Two of her three sisters also became drag racers, and now two nieces and a nephew are carrying on the family tradition — along with her still-unretired father, who turns 75 this month.

“Obviously, the types of racing that we do are very different,” said Rahal, who exchanged vows with
her in 2015. “But she’s tremendous. She understands what I have to go through.”

She also understands what devoted fans and followers want to know, posting timely social media dispatches about major family events. For instance, she took to Twitter to announce her retirement from drag racing in January 2019 and confided in May 2020 that “we’ve been keeping a little secret … baby Rahal coming November 2020!”

Three months later, she shared a baby bump photo and invited recommendations on “travel-friendly gear for this future race track kid.” And when Harlan Ann Rahal entered the world on November 2, Force quipped, “Rahal party of 3.” Naturally, the arrival of little sis Tinley Leighton Rahal on Sept. 6, 2022, also merited an update.

Despite the girls’ DNA, it’s probably too soon to plan for another Rahal taking the green flag at Indy or another Force girl firing up a dragster. But if it means anything, Rahal notes that with 3-year-old Harlan, “I can tell you there’s no doubt that kid loves racing” and that Tinley, too, has shown an early affinity for cars.

Rahal was about Harlan’s age when he began displaying the aptitude of a future race driver, said Bobby Rahal. “For anybody who knew him at about 3 or 4 years old, it was a foregone conclusion that Graham would end up where he is,” he said, recalling the times he attended racing industry dinners with his son in tow. “Most little kids would tug at your sleeve and say, ‘Let’s go,’” said Bobby, yet Rahal would sit quietly in his lap, often falling asleep from physical exhaustion but never seeming to tire of the racing scene.

Rahal recalls it similarly. “As a little kid, I always wanted to be at the race track with my dad,” he said. “At 4 or 5 years old, I wanted to be a race car driver. I started racing go-karts at 10, and 25 years later, here I am.”

Rahal was only 11 when he won nine of 16 Ohio Valley Karting Association races and received Rookie of the Year honors. At 15, he got his first taste of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the Formula BMW series, turning laps on the road course at an age when most teens can’t legally drive solo around their own block.

Not that his dad pushed him into it. “To be honest, I wasn’t supportive of him racing,” said Bobby. “First, there was his education, and second, I didn’t want him to feel like he had to follow in somebody’s footsteps.”

Yet his determined son would not be deterred, and when Bobby finally allowed him to race go-karts, Rahal’s immediate success convinced him that the boy was a natural. “He was made for it, and it was made for him,” Bobby said.

Perhaps it’s in his bloodline and Bobby’s, since neither was the original racing Rahal. That title goes to Bobby’s father, Michael, an amateur race driver who piloted a Porsche, an Austin-Healey, and other high-end models in Sports Car Club of America events from 1957 through the 1970s. “Racing was his outlet, a place for him to have fun,” said Rahal.

His grandfather, who had immigrated with his family from what is now Lebanon, served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and started a successful wholesale food distributorship in Chicago. Still a family business, it exists today as Rahal Fruits & Flavors, with Bobby’s brother, Ian, as president and CEO.

The casual fan might imagine that when Rahal was deemed ready for prime time, Dad’s racing team supplied the wheels. But that’s not how his father raised him. “I thought it was important for him to drive for other people,” said Bobby, “and he drove for two of the greatest teams
in history: Newman-Haas and Ganassi. He earned that — I didn’t buy him a ride.”

At times, Bobby probably wished he’d kept Rahal to himself, especially when his son notched his first Indy car victory — the rain-soaked Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in 2008 — and set a record (since broken) as the youngest driver to win an Indy car race at 19 years, 93 days old.

Rahal’s open-wheel racing career actually began a year earlier while still a student at New Albany High School in suburban Columbus, Ohio. His racing schedule forced him to miss out on the usual high school highlights, including his senior prom. But he tried to make it up to his would-be prom date by flying her to Texas to see him compete in the Grand Prix of Houston. She was probably impressed — Rahal
placed second.

Yet Bobby never demanded top finishes from his son. “Shockingly to a lot of people, his biggest piece of advice was to follow my heart,” said Rahal. “Do what you truly love.”

Bobby had a few other thoughts, too. “I told him I don’t care about how many races you win. What I care about most is that you’re a gentleman — good to the fans and good to your crew. Everything else will take care of itself.”

To hear Mark Jaynes talk, Rahal has already achieved as much. 

“He’s a tremendous ambassador for the sport,” said Jaynes, the current “Voice of the 500” for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network. Some of Rahal’s finest moments occurred during his news conference after he got bumped from the Indy 500 field, Jaynes said. “If you are raising a young child who’s a football player, a basketball player, a golfer, you owe it to them to sit them down and let them hear everything Graham had to say,” he said. “I don’t think anybody’s ever handled adversity with more class and grace.”

Graham and his wife also operate the Graham and Courtney Rahal Foundation, a charity that has raised $1.5 million for cancer research and PTSD treatment for military veterans.

The race driver’s life is never dull but never certain, either. As Rahal likes to say, “You’ve got to plan for when the music stops.” He’s nowhere near ready to park his Indy car permanently, but “you don’t know. Racing can change at any point, your life can change at any point, and you’ve got to be prepared.”

To that end, he has embraced the Indianapolis suburb of Zionsville in a big way. An August groundbreaking in Creekside Corporate Park kicked off construction on a new 115,000-square-foot headquarters for his GR Brands, whose upscale portfolio encompasses dealerships for specialty cars and Italian-made motorcycles and motor scooters under the Ducati and Piaggio labels. He’s also building a new home in exclusive Holliday Farms, a golf community with a Pete Dye course.

In racing, as with many professions, the father’s success opens doors for the son but also imposes often unfair expectations. As a teenager, Rahal was first hailed in the press as his sport’s much-needed “phenom to capture the imagination of the American public” — then questioned a year later about why he hadn’t won in the past 20 races.

And his respectable 17-year career record, which includes six victories and two third-place finishes in the Indianapolis 500, will forever be measured against his father’s 24 wins, notably at Indy in 1986.

But it’s not as if Rahal has forgotten how to drive at Indianapolis. Last August on the road course, he was runner-up to Scott Dixon in the Gallagher Grand Prix, foiled by a lengthy yellow light after dominating most of the race.

His father cautions against comparing eras. “When I drove, the differences between teams were greater than they are today,” said Bobby. “In ’82, there were two or three, maybe four teams at most that were very competitive, and everybody else
was out there for the scraps. And there were only five or six people who had new cars. Today, everybody has new cars.”

It’s also worth noting that Rahal is only two years older than his dad was when Bobby took the checkered flag at the Indy 500. Not that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has lost any of its magic. “It’s a very special place, just as special today as it was for race one,” he said.

And when the music finally stops for Rahal, hopefully many years from now, it’s a safe bet that he’ll walk away from the sport in the same way he carried himself during his career — as a gentleman.

Fast Facts

BIRTHDATE | January 4, 1989

HOMETOWN | New Albany, Ohio

RESIDENCE | Zionsville, Indiana

YEARS RACING | 22

FIRST INDYCAR WIN | Streets of St. Petersburg, 2008

SIX TOTAL INDYCAR WINS

St. Petersburg, 2008
Fontana, 2015
Mid-Ohio, 2015
Texas Motor Speedway, 2016
Detriot Race 1, 2017
Detriot Race 2, 2017