Photography courtesy Graham Rahal.
This Graham Rahal feature story originally appeared on the cover of the March 2025 issue of Autostrada Magazine.
There are six heartbeats in Graham Rahal’s seven-seater Cadillac Escalade V. Two adults, two kids, and two Alaskan malamutes. That’s five more than most people will be used to hearing about in regards to the 35-year-old’s driving habits. And that’s because he’s most famous for being alone in a car on any of the IndyCar Series tracks, regularly topping speeds of 380 km/h.
Today, however, having just raced at Leguna Seca, he’s on the road from Orange County to Lake Tahoe, cruising at highway speeds for family time with his wife, his two young girls, and the pets.
“The Escalade V is my daily driver out here and you know it’s very hard to beat this car,” he says. “When you take all the kids and you’ve got the dogs and the roof box and everything going, it’s very, very hard to beat the amount of junk you can get in an Escalade. And the V of course makes it just that little bit cooler, so we love this thing. We’ve had it for a couple of years, and if you know me, that’s a hell of a long time.”
This is the Rahal family way. Motorsport as a lifestyle. Move fast, drive fast. That the girls should be trackside or nearby when Dad is at work only seems right. It’s how both of their parents were raised, after all. Rahal and his wife Courtney met and began falling for each other at a racing event of hers. (Rahal insists “she slid into [his] DMs first,” but Autostrada was unable to independently verify this claim.)
“She grew up in racing, so for her this is nothing atypical,” he says. “In fact, her family is still out on the NHRA circuit week in week out, so we sort of bounce back and forth all over the place, try to support as best we can.” The Rahal name is of course also well known in racing circles. Graham’s father, Bobby Rahal, famously won the 1986 Indianapolis 500 after placing second in 1982; secured three CART championship titles in 1986, 1987, and 1992 (and won 24 CART race wins in total); and also won the 1981 24 Hours of Daytona.
In his now 16-year career as a pro driver, the second-generation Rahal has done well to grow from beneath the long shadow of his father and carve out a place for himself in the industry. He became the youngest winner in IndyCar history by taking the 2008 St. Petersburg race, and had a standout 2015 season, winning races at Fontana and Mid-Ohio, and finishing fourth in the championship standings. He has also achieved multiple podium finishes, including a notable second place at the 2015 Indianapolis 500.
“I never felt pressure to follow in Dad’s footsteps,” says Rahal, “but once you are in it, that pressure is immense and it never really subsides. I’ve been doing this a long time now, but it never subsides. The expectation is still that you should go out and win – that you should beat everybody. The reality is that’s not the situation. To put it in Canadian terms, you know, just because you’re Wayne Gretzky’s kid doesn’t mean you’re Wayne Gretzky. And it doesn’t mean you’re going to be as dominant too. Things have changed. The sport has changed. The quality of the competition and of teams has changed. Things are different, but obviously we all want to succeed.”
In the backseat of the Cadillac, one of the girls has started to cry – a steady scream, more tired sounding than really distressed, still loud enough to be picked up by the in-ear Bluetooth device. But Rahal is not to be distracted. He may be off duty, but the skills and focus honed behind the wheel of a race car can’t be switched off because the vehicle and noises change. And luckily so, because a Friday afternoon drive along one of California’s busy highways can have just as many variables as a weekend at Leguna Seca, sometimes more.
“Oh shit!” exclaims Rahal, suddenly. “A truck just cut me off…it’s OK, we’re good.” So far the 2024 race season has been about the same – somewhere between “OK” and “good” with a couple of “oh shits.”
“Racing’s been good – a little bit up and down this year, but generally good,” he says. “We’ve been in the top 10 most races. We’ve had a lot of misses. We’ve finished every lap of the year and I think we’re one of only two to do that so far, but there are a lot of things that I wish that we’d maximize. We got a pit speed penalty at the Indy 500 that cost us probably a top five top six at worst…we had a lot of little issues like that, which stings looking back. But as a team we’re trying to improve and catch up with guys like Penske etc., and I think right now things are going well.”
While not training, traveling, racing, parenting or any combination of those, Rahal is engaged in the plethora of activities required for his role as head of Graham Rahal Brands, a portfolio of companies that reflects the family passion for high-performance vehicles and motorcycles. The massive new company headquarters still under construction in Zionsville, Indiana, will serve as the main hub for Graham Rahal Performance (GRP), which specializes in custom tuning and performance parts for a wide range of vehicles, and which Rahal says the brand is best known for. The facility also houses Rahal’s other enterprises, such as Rahal Ducati Indianapolis, Rahal Ducati Cleveland, Rahal Paint Protection, and Rahal Piaggio Indianapolis. These companies provide services ranging from motorcycle sales and servicing to high-quality paint protection and window tinting. Additionally, the headquarters includes a car storage facility, a restaurant, and a members-only social club.
“Zionsville was kind of a culmination of a dream of bringing all of our companies together,” says Rahal. “In the United States at least we are the foremost Carrera GT experts in this country. We recommission and totally restore Porsche Carrera GTs to the customer specifications, and do a lot of crazy things like that. But in this facility we’ll also have our Ducati dealership, the only Ducati franchise in the state of Indiana. We’re the only Piaggio dealerships. So Piaggio is Piaggio scooters, Vespa scooter, Moto Guzzi and Aprilia. So we’re the only MotoPlex in the entire state of Indiana as well.”
Few vehicles roll through Graham Rahal Performance’s showroom without the boss putting his eyes on them. At the time of writing, the division is selling a pair of Lancia Kimera EVO37. In and of themselves, these rare cars are incredible products sure to bring in a few coins for the business, but beyond that, they add to the allure of the facility and the family name on the front.
“We try to push and breed this relationship so that everybody wants to come and just hang and be a part of it,” he says. “And I think that the new facility is going to allow us to do that in a completely different respect than an ordinary car dealership that’s kind of stale.”
The aim is for the Rahal name to continue to drive the sport and the community into the future, and for the flagship location to be the kind of place their kind of people want to spend their free time – the kind of place where two young lovers with like minded families might meet and start a life together. “Here it’s more of a social gathering spot than almost anything else,” he says. “So I think people are really going to enjoy that part of it.”
All is now calm in the backseat of Escalade. The girls (and presumably the dogs) are quietly distracted or asleep, leaving time for Rahal to reflect on the type of childhood he enjoyed and how his girls’ experience – the next-gen Rahal experience – compares.
“I have a lot of great memories of being at the racetrack,” he says. “I think that’s where a lot of us grew such a strong love for it, from being around it as a kid. For me, the race weekends that I got to go out with my dad to the racetrack and watch him, got to ride the golf cart around and go do things, go watch him on track and see our race teams run, those are still probably some of the highlights of my life. Those times there was no pressure, there was no expectation… just a kid watching an Indy car go around the track. I think someday I look forward to that again, to being on the flip side of the sport and becoming a fan again, putting the competitive nature aside and just going out there as a fan and being able to watch again. I do look forward to that at some point.”
For now, however, there are miles to be driven and work to be done. For now, Graham Rahal is keeping both hands firmly on the wheel.
