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.
