![\"Graham](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/04-24-Rahal-Inside.jpg\")
<\/p>\nGraham Rahal finished 18th in the first two street races to open the 2026 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season \u2013 the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg and the Java House Grand Prix of Arlington.<\/p>\n
He started 18th and 24th in those events.<\/p>\n
Last Sunday at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, Rahal started 10th and finished eighth in the No. 15 One Cure Honda for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, a clear step forward from Arlington on March 15.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were a lot better,\u201d Rahal said. \u201cWe needed to continue to find speed. We did make huge strides last weekend. And once again, the guys did a great job in the pits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rahal enters the Sonsio Grand Prix on May 9 sitting 10th in points. He was 16th entering the Month of May last year, with one fewer race on the schedule, and ranked 15th and 16th entering May in 2024 and 2023, respectively.<\/p>\n
\u201cBest we\u2019ve been in a long time,\u201d Rahal said. \u201cI\u2019m proud of everybody. Good results and momentum. When you get momentum, it tends to keep rolling.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, fingers crossed we can keep that positivity going. They\u2019ve been amazing in the pits all year, and they deserve a lot of credit for that and all the work our team has put in. Sunday wasn\u2019t our brightest, but we still finished eighth. That\u2019s a good sign of things to come if we can clean a couple things up.\u201d<\/p>\n
That progress could continue in the Sonsio Grand Prix on the 14-turn, 2.439-mile, Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, where Rahal has 15 top-10 finishes in 17 starts.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He won the pole for the 2023 summer race and finished second to Scott Dixon. Last year, Rahal (photo, above) started second and led 49 of 85 laps before finishing sixth after strategy didn\u2019t fall his way.<\/p>\n
Rahal believes offseason changes at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, including Kyle Sagan as pit stop manager, Brian Barnhart as senior vice president of operations and Rahal\u2019s strategist and Gavin Ward\u2019s hiring in an advisory role, have helped move the team forward.<\/p>\n
A favorable stretch of tracks could further that progress, eventually leading to Rahal to snapping his 148-race winless drought dating to Belle Isle Park in June 2017 and RLL\u2019s winless streak of 47 races, as Christian Lundgaard last won for the team in July 2023 on the streets of Toronto.<\/p>\n
After the Month of May, the series heads to the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear on May 31, where Rahal started fifth last year. World Wide Technology Raceway follows June 7, and Rahal showed pace at a short oval earlier this season at Phoenix Raceway, starting third and finishing ninth. Then comes Road America on June 21, where Rahal started sixth last year while teammate Louis Foster won the pole.<\/p>\n
His home race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on July 5 is next, a track where Ohio native Rahal traditionally runs well. He won there in 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me tell you something, they (other teams) know we\u2019re here,\u201d Rahal said. \u201cThat\u2019s the fact. We\u2019ve got a lot of people saying positive things about our team, and that\u2019s a good sign. As we go into May, I feel very strongly about the next handful of races.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndy oval is always its own challenge, but I still feel good about it. The road course, Detroit, Road America, there are a lot of great races for us coming up. We\u2019ll see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Graham Rahal finished 18th in the first two street races to open the 2026 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-409302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}