Bobby Rahal

Bobby Rahal is one of the most well-rounded individuals to take part in motorsport. His reputation for using his brain in the cockpit was well deserved, and that intellect helped Rahal build a solid foundation for his post-driving career.

Rahal retired from active CART competition in 1998 after a 17-year career that netted 24 race wins (including the 1986 Indianapolis 500) and three PPG Cup Championships. Rahal also earned overall victories at the 24-Hours of Daytona and the Sebring 12-Hours, and he takes great personal satisfaction in those sports car triumphs.

In the past couple of years, Rahal has started acquiring and driving several vintage racing cars that were near and dear to him thoughout his life, including several of his own racers from the past. At the recent Bosch Spark Plug GP at Nazareth Speedway, he talked to John Oreovicz about his vintage racing activities, among other things.

VRJ: What vintage racing events have you recently taken part in?

Rahal: The most recent thing I did was the Copper State 1000 in early April. Of course, that’s not racing, per se, but I drove a 1955 Mercedes 300SL Gullwing.

VRJ: How do the vintage scene regulars react when you show up?

Rahal: People are a little bit taken aback that I’m doing it. I still enjoy driving a racecar – it’s fun. Obviously there’s no pressure, it’s very relaxing, and what’s most fun about it to me is I’m driving cars that I either dreamt about as a kid or I had personal experience with. I just bought a 2-liter Lola-BMW that is similar to the car I used to drive in 1977. I won a couple of 2-liter Can-Am races with it, and I’ve always sort of thought those cars are the ideal racecar. So I’m out there just having fun.

It’s a difficult situation for me. I don’t take any particular satisfaction in saying I beat some fellow who’s out there racing for fun who hasn’t raced professionally. You don’t take any particular glee in winning an exhibition, like when I drove the GT40 at Daytona. It’s not a race – it’s for me to just enjoy my car.

VRJ: How hard do you actually drive these things?

Rahal: I’m driving them hard. I guess I’ve always driven things hard – to me, that’s what it’s all about. If you get put in a class with bigger cars, it’s always a challenge to see how many of the big cars you can beat. But for the most part, I’m strictly there to enjoy my car and to relive the experience of driving it. And I think most people understand that’s my intent, that I’m not there just to feel good about winning.

Take the GT40. I had dreamt about that car when I was a kid, and there I was driving one in the races at Daytona last fall, driving it hard against Chris MacAllister’s Porsche. It didn’t take a lot of imagination, and I didn’t have to squint too hard to believe we were back in 1966. So after the experience of driving it, I can now appreciate what those fellows went through. I can understand what a wonderful endurance racer the GT40 had to have been, and it was just a thrill to own it and experience part of it.

I raced at Goodwood in a Ferrari 250GTO. That was an unbelievable car and an unbelievable race weekend. It’s fun for me, and I’m having the opportunity to do a lot of things like that. Not enough, but my racing and business get in the way. I love it, because it gives me a chance to see old friends like Bobby Brown and James King, guys I used to race with in Atlantics 20-25 years ago. And I’ve gotten to meet a lot of new people. So it’s been a real plus for me.

VRJ: It is said that you got hooked on racing when your dad took you to tracks like Elkhart Lake as a kid. What were some of the cars that made an impression on you?

Rahal: Any of the big Can-Am and Formula 1 cars of the late ’60s and early ’70s. I was a big Jim Clark fan – a big road racing fan. The GT40s, the Chaparrals…I was so fortunate to witness such an unbelievable period in racing, growing up from 1963 to 1973. In ’62-’63, I was ten years old, and if you look at what happened in that decade from ’63 to ’73, it was phenomenal. So I consider myself very fortunate to have seen these cars and the drivers of that era perform.

VRJ: You made your name in open-wheel Champ Cars, with three CART championships and a victory in the 1986 Indianapolis 500. But I sense that sports car racing is something you hold very dear.

Rahal: One of the eras I think is just unbelievably special is the late ’60s and early ’70s. My father raced at Sebring in 1970 and ’71, and those were just the glory days of sports cars, with Porsche and Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Matra and the world’s greatest drivers. You had factory Grand Prix drivers all competing in that formula.

People ask me what was the most satisfying race in my life, and when I tell them it was the Sebring 12-Hours… the press – especially the roundy-rounders – are all amazed. For me, it had such meaning from when I was a kid that when I won it in 1987 with Jochen Mass, I considered it to be the crown jewel of American endurance racing. To have my name on the list of victors in that race was special. That’s some pretty heady company.

So sports car racing was something I always wanted to do, and I was fortunate to be able to drive in the era of the Porsche 935, 956 and 962. I won some races in those cars and got to run at some great places. My only regret is that I didn’t get to win at Le Mans. But I always enjoyed sports car racing, and I frankly thought long and hard when I retired whether to totally retire or to go back into sports car racing. I’m kind of young still, for some of those guys. It was a tough decision to make, but nevertheless, my intent is to one day have a sports car racing team, because I want to go win Sebring, Daytona, and Le Mans as a team owner.

VRJ: Another element of your career many people respect was your decision to go and prove yourself in the heat of European competition, racing Formula 3 and Formula 2 in the late ’70s. Why did you take your career down that path?

Rahal: The guys I always admired and respected like Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, Peter Revson and, obviously, Mario Andretti, were guys who were willing to step outside of their narrow little niches and take on the world. I’m not one of those who believes Americans aren’t capable of beating the world’s best. But Americans have to be willing to go put themselves in that environment, especially in the training years, to be able to do that. Unfortunately, most young Americans are not willing to do that. They’re not motivated to do it, and they don’t see the value in it. But the reality is you have to go where the competition is.

Without a doubt, my two years of junior formula racing in Europe were two of the greatest years I ever spent. That was because of the guys I raced against, including Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Stefan Johansson, Nelson Piquet, Arie Luyendyk, Derrick Warwick, and Keke Rosberg. The guys at that time went on to dominate racing on both sides of the Atlantic for the next decade and a half.

I definitely think the internationalism is what provides value. If you beat everybody, then you really say something. If you just beat a narrow little group, you’re nothing more than a big fish in a little pond. That’s fine if it’s what you want. But to me, the ones who achieved true greatness were the ones who were willing to put their talent up against any talent in the world.

VRJ: What do you remember about your efforts to break into Formula 1?

Rahal: I drove Dallara’s first F3 car in ’78 for a guy named Walter Wolf, who had an F1 team with Jody Scheckter. The idea was I’d run F3 for them and then run the end of the year in F1 and the following year. In ’78, I drove two F1 races, at Watkins Glen and Montreal. I finished 13th in the US Grand Prix, and in Montreal I was running pretty well early in the race, in 9th place I think, but the fuel system packed up.

Looking back, I was pretty young to be at that level. I was 25, and the most powerful thing I had driven was a Formula Atlantic car with about 180 horsepower. But I think we did a pretty good job of proving ourselves.[pullquote]“People ask me what was the most satisfying race in my life, and when I tell them it was the Sebring 12-Hours… the press – especially the roundy-rounders – are all amazed. To have my name on the list of victors in that race was special.”[/pullquote]

Then Scheckter left for Ferrari. I thought I was in, but the team hired James Hunt, and he made it very clear he wanted a one-car effort. So yours truly was out in the wilderness. I was really depressed in early ’79 – I had nothing. Then Chevron asked me to drive their F2 car, but they wanted $100,000. I sold sponsorship one race at a time for $5,000-6,000, and that’s when I hooked up with Ampex Cassettes. Midway through ’79, I was asked to replace George Follmer in the Prophet Can-Am car. I didn’t want to leave Europe, but here was a guy in the U.S. in a major form of motorsport who was willing to pay me. Sometimes the choices you have to make are made for you.

VRJ: What drivers made a lasting impression on you?

Rahal: I think there are two types of drivers: naturally gifted, like Gilles Villeneuve or Ronnie Peterson. For guys like that, racing came easy. They had such natural talent they transcended everybody because of their brilliance. But they’re like comets. None of them could sustain that level for a full season. Most of the great drivers, like Mario Andretti or Emerson Fittipaldi or Jackie Stewart, had talent, no question, but they had the mental capacity equal to the physical capacity.

Championships are rarely won by the fastest guy. Champions realize that on some days second or fourth is as good as first. You have to be brave, but that’s overrated. It comes down to a combination of determination, intelligence, and judgment, and the closest guy to that was my hero, Jim Clark. Sheer speed is important, but at some point, you have to have the mental capacity to take that talent to the next level.

A guy who probably doesn’t get the recognition he should is Rick Mears. Rick never promoted himself – he’s a very quiet guy – but he was the greatest oval driver I’ve ever seen. He was a damn good road racer too, even after his accident at Sanair in ’84. When you beat him on an oval, you really felt you had done something.

Another wonderful man is Brian Redman, who, to me, had all the talent to do whatever he wanted, if not the drive.

VRJ: Of all the various machines you’ve driven, what was the best pure racecar of the bunch?

Rahal: That’s kind of a tough question. The Indy cars, especially later on, say from ’96 on, were really impressive. The power really started to go up in the cars. From an endurance standpoint, there’s really no question that the 962 was the ultimate. It was a comfortable car, and it was fast. It may not have been the ultimate single-lap car, but over a 24-hour race or a 12-hour race, it took all the abuse that a car takes and it was the ultimate car from my generation that I drove. I’m not sure you’d want to hit anything in one, because they were pretty shaky from a safety standpoint. But Porsche has never been famous for the safety of its racing cars. Look at the 917…the early ones sent chills up and down your spine.

I just bought a Porsche 908 3-liter prototype car that ran in ’69 at Sebring. It’s a spectacular car, and I remember Redman and Jo Siffert and those guys driving the thing. But again it’s one of those cars that you don’t want to be in if it hits anything. There’s nothing but an aluminum frame and a bunch of fiberglass. Safety was always taking a back seat, it seems, in those things.

VRJ: What else is in your stable of vehicles?

Rahal: There’s the 908 that I just bought, and I have a 427 Cobra – a street car, not a race car. Growing up in the ’60s, anything Cobra was great. I have a Gullwing, I have the last Reynard Champ Car that I drove in 1998. I also have the Corvette Pace Car that I won at Indy, and recently I’ve started a little collection of meaningful personal cars.

I found my first Atlantic car, a Lola T360 that I ran in 1975, which we’re in the process of restoring. It will be fun to go out and bomb around in that thing. The tub’s been redone, so it’s just a matter of bolting it together and getting it ready. Then I bought the first car that I ever raced, which was my father’s car – an Elva-Porsche. I drove it in Canada in 1970 when I was 17 years old. We just bought the car, having finally tracked it down.

So it will be neat. I’ll have the first car I ever drove and the last car I ever drove. Then hopefully my sons can drive them some day. It would be neat to have the grandfather, the father and the son all having run in the same car. So we’re starting to collect some cars that are meaningful to me. Interestingly, some have meaning and some don’t. But, in any event, I’m slowly trying to put together a collection that’s meaningful.

VRJ: The final question we ask everyone is always the same. What’s the one car you’d particularly like to own or race?

Rahal: I think I’d probably like to someday get a 917 Porsche, or maybe a 312PB Ferrari, with the flat-12. Something from that era of sports cars from 1969 to 1972 or ’73. That to me was just the ultimate. They really set a standard that hasn’t ever been exceeded.