BOBBY RAHAL: AN AMERICAN HERO WITH HIS HEART IN EUROPE
In a 16-year career behind the wheel of America’s leading single-seater championship, Bobby Rahal took part in more than 250 races, won three titles and claimed the most famous race of them all, the Indianapolis 500, in 1986.
Had his career taken a slightly different path, that trophy collection could have included a host of silverware from Formula 1 too, but that opportunity went begging after just a couple of outings for the Wolf team.
While Rahal’s decorated career behind the wheel brought him the on-track successes he deserved in the United States, his move into team ownership in 1992 opened yet another chapter for the likeable Ohio-born man and it brought him the honour of being the owner-driver for a title triumph in that very first season.
He made it back to Formula 1 in 2000 as the CEO of the Jaguar team, but he left soon into the follow season. He has also held high-ranking positions with the CART organisation which looks after the top-tier US single-seater scene, and is also a proud father of current Indycar racer Graham. Indeed, his son’s name is a tribute to Rahal Sr’s early passion for European road racing, as he explains here.
Question: What got you in to racing, and how old were you?
John Charles Via email
Bobby Rahal: “I was introduced to it through my parents. My father began sportscar racing in the late 1950s, so I pretty much remember my entire youth and childhood and later in to my teenage years my summers were going racing with my parents. I went to Sebring in 1957 or 1958, but I don’t recall that. I was only four of five years old.
“In the 1960s I was very drawn in to motorsport, again because of my father racing and we had a number of young guys that hung out at our house in their late teens and early 20s at the time, about 10 years older than me. They would take me drag racing, dirt track racing, sportscar race, Indycar races that sort of thing. So it all came from personal experiences with my family.”
MN: What was your first Indy 500 as a spectator?
“It’s almost bad to say this, but I never had that much interest in the 500! I saw the ’64 race at a closed-circuit movie theatre, and of course that was a horrible race where Dave MacDonald and Eddie Sachs were killed, and MacDonald had been a bit of a hero because I’d read all about him in the Cobras and King Cobras and all he had done. Jim Clark was my hero, so I was always cheering for
