Champ Car World Series rookie Graham Rahal succeeded in holding onto fifth place in the end-of-season drivers' standings courtesy of a strong performance in Mexico City last weekend, seeing off the challenges of Oriol Servia, Bruno Junqueira, Simon Pagenaud and Neel Jani along the way.

The Newman/Haas ace was on the pace from the word go in Mexico – his debut at the challenging Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez – setting the seventh-quickest time in practice and going better still to post the fifth-fastest lap in opening qualifying. Though he would slip back down to seventh again in the final session, he knew what he needed to do.

“A little bit of time makes a lot of difference here,” the 18-year-old explained ahead of the race, “because if you can get a little more time through the Esses, every single corner adds up to quite a bit since there are five or six turns in a row.

“We have to finish ahead of Pagenaud and some of these other guys ahead of us; otherwise it's going to be hard to finish fifth in the championship. It will be tough but not impossible.”

The race began with a scramble off the grid after three cars stalled, forcing the director to throw a yellow flag which was ignored by a number of drivers and had to be sorted with a shuffle of cars. When racing resumed following a couple of laps behind the safety car, Rahal was still occupying seventh place, but problems for both Robert Doornbos and Justin Wilson ahead of him promoted him to fifth, before then snatching fourth from danger man Pagenaud.

He would claim a further scalp by passing Paul Tracy for third during the first round of pit-stops, and as the race reached mid-distance the son of former Indy 500 winner Bobby Rahal was firmly settled in a podium position and lapping comfortably on the leaders' pace, whilst also saving fuel to ensure he could reach the chequered flag with only one further stop.

Remaining third as the race entered its closing stages, a technical infringement in practice which had cut his Power-to-Pass boost by 22 seconds would ultimately cost the teenager dear, as a late on-track incident brought out the yellow flags once more, and all of a sudden the driver of the #2 car was under pressure. Despite Rahal doing his best to keep his cool, Servia took advantage of his rival's lack of any remaining boosts to sneak past and steal the final rostrum placing with just three laps to go.

“We came here for the win really,” Rahal acknowledged afterwards, “but it's great for Sébastien (Bourdais) to take that in his final race in Champ Cars – he deserves his four titles and I hope he continues with his winning performances in Formula 1 next year.

“As we couldn't take the win at least we had the performance to clinch fifth in the championship and second in the rookie race and that was our other goal, so I'm pleased with these achievements. It's a shame we didn't have enough Power-to-Pass for a podium spot, but the car was just a little too nervous to push more and the others had more boost left, so I think we have to be content with fourth.”

In the lead-up to the weekend, Rahal was announced as one of four nominees for the Greg Moore Legacy Award. The accolade is presented to the driver deemed to most typify the late Canadian's distinctive combination of on-track talent and dynamic personality. Fans can vote for Graham at www.champcarworldseries.com