Indy 500: Graham Rahal Eliminated From Race After Wrecking Car

Graham Rahal is out of the Indy 500 after crashing his car out of the pit road. The veteran IndyCar driver lost a wheel while driving out of the pit road, leading him to crash into the wall more than halfway through the Indianapolis 500. Rahal was considered one of the favorites to win “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”

Rahal, 31, was feeling confident he could win the Indy 500 after coming in third in the race last year. “I feel good,” he said as reported by Racer.com. “I think even the qualifying package, we weren’t bad. We just got too conservative. That happens. The conditions were better than we anticipated. We didn’t pull off enough drag, so that kind of bit us a little bit. But I think our race cars will be fast. We seem to be the best of our team so far, so we’ll see what that means.

“You’re going to have to race smart, for sure. No mistakes, no errors. I mean. I think this weekend is going to be very easy to screw up, so we’ve got to be smart about it and try to put ourselves in the right position to be successful.”

Rahal has won six IndyCar Series races in his career and finished sixth in the IndyCar Series standings in 2020. His father, Bobby Rahal, won the Indy500 in 1986. In an interview with Speedway Media back in April, Graham Rahal talked about filling in his father’s shoes when first entering the world of IndyCar.

“I don’t think there was any criticism about it,” Rahal said. “I think everyone was pretty nice to me. For me, a lot of the guys had respect for my dad. I mean, it wasn’t easy. You know, you had the rookie orientation you had to take part of. The first time you go out on an oval, Tony Kanaan is going to scare you. He’s going to do it on purpose and he does it to teach you a lesson. You have to accept that and learn that, and take it for what it is worth, move on.”