DETROIT – Graham Rahal’s bid to three-peat at the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear ended with a thud on Saturday.
Looking at least a definite podium contender in the first race of the doubleheader on the Raceway at Belle Isle Park, Rahal’s No. 15 United Rentals Honda crashed hard into the outside wall between Turns 13 and 14 on Lap 47.
Rahal, who swept the Verizon IndyCar Series doubleheader in Detroit a year ago, clipped the inside curbing with his right front tire, launching his Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing car across the track and into the wall.
Rahal was uninjured and will drive in Sunday’s second race on the challenging Belle Isle temporary street course.
“I’m OK,” Rahal said. “The car did its job. It’s unfortunate because we had, I think, at worst a third (-place car). A lot of our competitors were struggling today. We’ll go back and look at what happened. I just lost it.”
Rahal was the only driver in the field to start the race on the more durable Firestone primary tires. He had just made his second and final pit stop the incident. Back on the primary tire spec for the run to the end, he looked to have the measure of all but a couple cars ahead of him.
The impact was the biggest he’s had on the island, said Rahal.
“It was definitely a good hit, a big hit around here,” said Rahal, who, until Saturday, had finished in the top 10 of every race this season. “I feel all right. We weren’t going to win today; I think we had third. We had a little problem on our last stop, we were slow, but that’s OK. That happens. The stops before were phenomenal. We were going to come out third. It was shaping up pretty good.”
Rahal, who started eighth, made his way through the field on black-sidewall primary tires in the opening stint, leading two laps before pitting for the softer alternate red-sidewall tires.
“The reds, truthfully, for me were ugly,” he said. “It was a handful for me to hang on.”
Rahal had just switched back to the blacks when the crash happened and was hustling to make up ground. He didn’t fault the tire strategy that was different than the other 22 competitors.
“You can’t just follow the leader,” Rahal said. “You’ve got to be your own person. I think we just decided to try something different and get away off strategy a little bit, and it worked.
“In my head, I had it all played out.”
Rahal said he’d brushed the wall about 30 laps earlier.
“I touched the wall, but this sensation felt like something broke,” he said. “It was a weird time to happen. But the way it snapped loose, it was something I’d never experienced before. It was out of control. There was nothing I could do.”
Rahal has a shot at redemption in Race 2 on Sunday. Group qualifying is at 10:45 a.m. ET (live stream on RaceControl.IndyCar.com) with live race coverage on ABC (3:30 p.m.) and the Advance Auto Parts INDYCAR Radio Network.