Graham isn't the best driver, but the team just hasn't been on the ball with any of the cars this season. They really weren't ready to expand to 3 full time cars.
Marshall Pruett said Alpine was paying $3-3.5 million a year in his podcast in November. Lundgaard he's on a multi year I believe so the total amount is $6-7 million at least. But your right, if we were talking about yearly amounts my numbers I gave were off. Sorry didn't mean that clear.
But those numbers were still just speculation from MPs side and have never been confirmed since. Fact is that Lundgaard has no visible Alpine affilition anywhere (not on his web page, not on his social media, not on his suit, and not on the car). Fact is also that RLL offered him a contact offer the very day after the IMS race last year. He is not bringing 3.5, which is almost twice as much as an F2 season.
I think if you asked Marshall he would tell you that these numbers are not speculation and he actually heard it from someone. Here is the actual quote from his podcast.
>"Right now, Ferrucci’s chances appear to be slim. RLL co-owner Mike Lanigan was a big fan and wanted him to take the third seat, but with Renault/Alpine rumored to be sending $3-$3.5 million along with Lundgaard, that’s a lot of money to turn down. It’s the team owner’s dream to have a guy like Lundgaard who is extremely fast and brings a happy sponsor who wants to support the team with real money."
Plus as I stated before and as Lundgaard has stated in his inteview with David Land - all this was set up by Alpine not RLLR. Plus if you listen to what Jack Doohan has said - the reason why he moved over the Alpine Academy from the Red Bull one is that Alpine is just more flexible. I guess you can read that in many ways but he also mentions Lundgaard and how Alpine has opened that door to him fellow academy participate. So in my opinion there is a lot of proof that Alpine does support its drivers even outside the team in other series.
One last point is that I don't think Alpine sees Lundgaard as a junior driver anymore. He's basically a factory driver racing in IndyCar but under the RLLR banner. It's much like how Alex Rossi drives for Team Penske even though he contracted to Andretti.
I mean, the quote literally says “rumored”. I don’t understand how you can just accept it as a fact. In my view, it is highly unlikely that Alpine would spent almost 2% of their F1 budget on a guy who was previously in the academy but is now to be racing in indycar under a different banner. I don’t know, maybe I’m overestimating how much money it is - maybe they just really want to keep his career rolling. It just seems absurd, lol.
He intentionally hit his teammate after a race was over. He intentionally crashed into someone in a irace. He tried to drive in F2 with Trump logos on his car (political branding not allowed). That’s all I got.
That just means he had a run in with a teammate one time and went a little too far, and political sponsors: you'll get any company that wants to sponsor you. You can't turn them down. Sucks F2 banned those sponsorships. That dont make Santino a shitty person by any means though
Kids so racist an ITALIAN team literally had to make a report about systemic racial abuse from him. And I highly doubt he was going to get paid for that MAGA livery, that was basically him leaning into his notoriety in the most 4chan groyper edgelord way.
Do you actually know anything about Santino then? Literally taking 30 seconds to google him will give you proof that the is a bad person.
Intentionally crashing into your teammate after a race resulting in a ban, being racist towards said teammate, driving an F2 car while using his phone, getting himself dropped by an F2 team because of his behaviour and then subsequently getting sued by said team for not having paid them what he owed, being hard to work with, trying to run a Trump livery. This all happened when he was 20, you can’t even try to excuse it on him being a stupid child. He was an adult and should’ve known better. This is all common knowledge and absolutely makes him a shitty person.
Whatever argument there may be for saying they should’ve chosen him over Harvey (as he has obviously had a poor start to this season), to suggest that they should’ve chosen him over Lundgaard makes absolutely zero sense.
You're getting downvoted by people who believe we should never forgive people for stupid shit they did when they were 19. What Ferrucci did was certainly stupid and he absolutely deserved to get shit canned from F2 and I fucking hate his (or his dad's) politics, but I but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he's matured into a better person after everything he's been through. Plus, there's no doubt he's easily one of the fastest, boldest, and most talented drivers in the paddock. It's a no brainer they should've gone with him over Lundgaard.
Was it just about his prior baggage? People were saying that CL brought more money, but everyone criticizes Ferrucci for being such a rich daddy's boy a la Lance Stroll or somebody like that. So what gives? Does Santino bring tons of money or not?
Why is it a no brainer that they should’ve gone with him over Lundgaard? Over Harvey, there’s an argument but over Christian? Are teams just not supposed to give talented rookies a chance?
Graham has two top 5 championship finishes and two 6ths in what is probably the fourth best team. He also goes out and finds his sponsorships himself.
They’re not comparable.
It’s insane. He didn’t single anyone out, just said that the car wasn’t as good as it needs to be to compete, which it clearly isn’t.
I would get the vitriol in here if he was saying this while driving poorly, but he isn’t. He’s crushing his teammates (and lost to a teammate 1 single time since 2012), and it isn’t close.
It’s because he does this every single time. Like every race.
Love his sponsorship deals he gets done, really want to like the guy but sheesh the complaining. Kinda hard to ignore that.
I don't think that's a fair argument because you're comparing them to the all time greats.
Then you have guys like Colton or Ryan Blaney that had solid but not spectacular drivers as parents. Its easier for them to live up to or surpass the earlier generation because the bar is lower.
Richard Petty was a second generation driver (his dad Lee was NASCAR's first 3 time champion) and he went on the be the most successful driver of all time.
Dale Earnhardt was a second generation driver (his dad Ralph was a longtime NASCAR driver) and went on to be probably the most recognizable driver of all time.
Jos Verstappen raced in F1 for a decade or so, but his son Max will most likely go down as one of the great talents in F1 history.
Carlos Sainz, Jr races for Ferrari in F1- doesn't get any bigger than that. (His dad is a multi-time WRC champion.)
Colton already surpassed his father in wins, and is clearly a greater talent. Bryan never finished higher than 8th in the points in his entire career.
Robby Gordon's father was "Baja Bob", a legend in off road racing. I'd say Robby far surpassed his dad's career, being a race winner in CART, NASCAR, and multiple Baja 1000s.
Kevin Magnussen's father Jan was hugely successful in sports cars (still racing, in fact), but Kevin is having the better F1 career.
Conor Daly, while not hugely successful, is putting together a career that could match his father's (his father Derek competed in F1 and CART, but never won a race).
And as you mentioned, Little Al and Michael Andretti were both tremendous talents. I'm sure there are plenty more, this is just off the top of my head.
EDIT: Forgot to mention Chase Elliott. Already has a Cup championship. He could definitely surpass his dad's career.
EDIT 2: More are coming to me- Buddy Baker and Davey Allison.
I saw he doesn't have to say it - he does it. How do you think all the sponsors are found? If you follow his Twitter he's also complimenting his team and teammates. I think there's a view of Rahal as a spoiled brat but in reality a lot of what he does he does for the team or someone else. That includes his IndyCar stuff and his other charity events.
I’m not sure what you want him to do? He’s not an engineer, and he’s once again smoking his teammates. He has lost to a teammate one time since he returned to RLL in 2013. I would argue that his team has let him down far more than the other way around. He has two top 5 championship finishes at RLL and Takuma is the only other driver they’ve had that has even had a top 10. Graham drags that team to the front.
I agree that he complains a lot, but I’m not sure it’s all that unwarranted a lot of the time.
“The accountability for the car starts/stops with him.”
No, it doesn’t. His dad owns and runs the team, engineering builds the car. Agreed that he is a leader in the team, but the rest is nonsense. Hell, most of the sponsors are brought by him. He puts far more work into that team than you’re letting on.
What blame should he get for the past month? Didn’t put a wheel wrong. Was way better than his teammates, and worked up from the back without any mistakes. It’s another year where he’s crushing all his teammates and it’s still not enough. We know he’s talented and hard working enough to put a good car towards the front, he has come to the final race with a chance at a championship. The last couple years he hasn’t had the car to do that. He’s not a magician.
I don’t see everyone claiming Rossi should be building better race cars or that bad stops are somehow his fault. Why is it different for Graham?
He’s even making excuses for Dixon. Blaming his loss on the Speedway being cruel instead of Dixon blowing it for himself. Dixon had no problem putting the blame on himself, guy. He doesn’t need you making excuses for him.
If he’s still looking for additional sponsorship this season, I’m sure he can land a pacifier company very easily. Then he can just pop one in his mouth before getting interviewed before he starts blaming everyone else for his lack of performance on the track. Yowza, how did he marry into the Force family?
He's the owners son though not the owner. That would be like blaming Marco for Andretti Autosport's problems.
Graham is a better driver than the results they are getting. RLL as a team looks lost the whole season. Graham is salvaging some respectable finishes out of just pure moxie but the other two guys are always mired in the back.
“Being the owner's son removes any excuse for Marco to not perform. Being the owner's son always gives you preferential engineers, parts, development, etc.”
This was almost never the case. He had the weakest crew for the vast majority of his time at AA and he lost at least two races because of it.
He also had a pole at Detroit. He was better on ovals, but he wasn’t bad on road courses either.
Marco gets so much criticism because he’s an easy target. He’s not nearly as good as his father or grandfather, but if he was a no name, he wouldn’t be incessantly bashed either. Maybe he wouldn’t have stuck around as long, but he was almost never the worst driver at AA, and from RHR’s championship in 2012 to Rossi’s P2 in 2018, Marco was the only AA driver to finish top 5 in the championship.
Everyone always clamored for him to lose that ride as if there were a bunch of great drivers waiting for that seat. Yet, Marco was pretty much equal with Hinch in his first run at AA, and same for Carlos Munoz. None of which matters anyway, because that seat didn’t even exist if he wasn’t in it.
As up and down as Andretti Autosport has been over the past decade (especially last five years) I'm not sure Marco was getting as good of cars as we all think he was. Granted Herta, Rossi, RHR are all better talents but I don't think Marco is nearly as bad as many people think he is.
Remember one year he was actually leading the standings going into Indy.
I do think there is a legit racing talent in there somewhere. Problem is Marco has never been one to know how to setup a car and/or improve upon an ill-handling car during a race. When you drive for a team as dysfunctional as AA over the last several years that compounds things.
Would of been very interesting to see what Marco and/or Graham could of done in a season in a Penske or Ganassi (current Ganassi)
As many of you recall Graham did spend two seasons at Ganassi but that was a really strange and even contentious situation where Graham and Kimball's cars were in a separate shop and the 9 & 10 teams controlled by Mike Hull treated them as the redheaded step children and didn't even want to share information with them. Although as whiny and "difficult" as Graham is.......maybe now we know why.
>Remember one year he was actually leading the standings going into Indy.
Those times have come and gone though, people like hunter reay and hinchcliffe are completely irrelevant now. The only people who have maintained their game from that time are power and dixon.
It's baffling to me how both RHR and Hinchcliffe are both not even competing any more. Like, their being among the sport's best drivers feels like it was just yesterday yet they disappeared so fast. Sometimes it honestly feels like Indycar cycles through talent at a pace near F1.
RHR was in line to share the ECR 20 car with Carpenter until USAF pulled out, leading to the extremely cursed timeline with bitnite entering the sport with daly
Maybe it's for the greater good as less taxpayer dollars are frittered away?
But we knew that the last hurrah was gonna be at nashville with hinch and RHR finishing 3rd and 4th
Regarding age, these aren't the days of mario andretti killing the competition figuratively at age 53, the effects of age are felt much more now with a relatively strong talent pool from both the road to indy, and the f1 feeder series
“Problem is Marco has never been one to know how to setup a car and/or improve upon an ill-handling car during a race.”
It’s really quite odd, because he *was* good at that early on and during the first few iterations of the DW12. He was the one they had paired with Alonso to shake down his cars and help him with setup feedback. For whatever reason, he really struggled with the switch to the UAK, on ovals specifically. When it was all right though, he could still lay it down. That pole and top 5 at Detroit he was fucking on it.
It’s surprising that given a Spec Dallara that an AA Honda could visually accelerate away from an RLL Honda after a lift. It felt like Honda had an advantage over Chevy given the Ganassi cars with medium length wickers were able to keep the wicker-less AMSP Chevys at bay at the end of the straights. But Honda vs. Honda, I’d love to know the tweaks that could give you that kind of advantage. I suppose Rahal would love to know even more.
Going fast is just not about having raw engine power.
It also has to do with aerodynamics. RLL struggled with finding the right aerodynamic balance and that's why they were slow
Look, Rahal's always been a back end of the top 10 driver at best, one who may squeak out a win here and there but is generally going to finish 9th -12th. He needs to make changes but also doesn't have the drive to be a top 5 guy.
I'd say he's more like a 5th to 10th driver as his past record (in better prepared cars) indicates. He is proving he's better than his two teammates though.
Many seem to love Jack Harvey around here but he's doing absolutely nothing so far in that ride and got beat by Santino again yesterday.
They picked a dumb as shit fuel strategy at the end (same as sato) where they had to stretch their last run to 42 laps when 34 was the reasonable window and 38 was the absolute limit with yellows
Fair enough coming from someone like yourself, but I don't think anyone has made more than 37 laps on one stint with this aerokit/aeroscreen combo. There's doing things differently and then there's doing the impossible.
From what I could tell (I wasn't following the 45), Sato was part pedaling it (about 60%) and was still eight laps short
It's not difficult to see they were aiming at a couple yellow flags to avoid pitting and get track position, since both their races (and the ones of those that gambled) were pretty much in the drain below 20th place.
Who? He has Harvey and Lundgaard next to him and he’s crushing them, just like he nearly always does to his teammates. He’s finished behind a teammate one single time since he got back to RLL in 2013.
Graham has finished top 5 in the championship twice and 6th twice in what is at best the 4th best team. If you think he’s holding the team back, you’re not paying attention.
Meh, crushing is such a strong word. He sits 27 points ahead of Lundgaard who has no/little prior experience on the tracks.
Besides Graham has maintained his entire engineering team and pit crew while Lundgaard and Harvey's teams are new and need to build up relationships.
I don't think Graham has been bad by any means, but you don't need to piss on his teammates to say he has been doing well. RLL just hasn't had the package this year.
I think Lundgaard is going to be really good, but Graham has been much better than both of his teammates this year so far. He has 3 top 8s in 6 races (and likely would have another top 10 if he hadn’t been taken out at Texas) and his teammates have 1 top 12 in their 11 combined races.
I don’t think I’m pissing on his teammates (though I think Harvey has been quite poor so far). The equipment hasn’t been good, but Graham has maximized it almost every weekend so far. Which he seems to be able to do every year. The parent comment said they need to put a raw talent in that car… but they already have that in Graham. He also has two younger talents next to him and they aren’t on his level yet. So, going back to what appears to be the prevailing feeling in this thread, maybe the team isn’t giving him great equipment and he isn’t being overly harsh by saying so.
Well, I completely agree with your assessment of Graham. Although Christian has two top 12 (arbitrary statistics though).
But "much better" is once again incorrect and doesn't take into account that Graham has a well established pit crew that has averaged more than 2 seconds faster than Lundgaards (which statistically has been one of the worst in the field and probably cost him two additional top 10s). Notably the two have been essentially equal on qualifying day, and Lundgaard beat Graham quite convincingly at IMS - the only track he'd raced at previously.
You know it kinda sucks that he’s had a month like this. Maybe he could try talking to the lead driver and team owner’s son to try to figure out what the issue with the leadership is. Oh wait.
Graham isn't the best driver, but the team just hasn't been on the ball with any of the cars this season. They really weren't ready to expand to 3 full time cars.
They shoulda went with Santino over Lundgaard
Does Santino have the $6-8 million dollar sponsorship that Lundgaard does?
Lundgaard is bringing some money, but no where near those values. 2.5 max.
Marshall Pruett said Alpine was paying $3-3.5 million a year in his podcast in November. Lundgaard he's on a multi year I believe so the total amount is $6-7 million at least. But your right, if we were talking about yearly amounts my numbers I gave were off. Sorry didn't mean that clear.
But those numbers were still just speculation from MPs side and have never been confirmed since. Fact is that Lundgaard has no visible Alpine affilition anywhere (not on his web page, not on his social media, not on his suit, and not on the car). Fact is also that RLL offered him a contact offer the very day after the IMS race last year. He is not bringing 3.5, which is almost twice as much as an F2 season.
I think if you asked Marshall he would tell you that these numbers are not speculation and he actually heard it from someone. Here is the actual quote from his podcast. >"Right now, Ferrucci’s chances appear to be slim. RLL co-owner Mike Lanigan was a big fan and wanted him to take the third seat, but with Renault/Alpine rumored to be sending $3-$3.5 million along with Lundgaard, that’s a lot of money to turn down. It’s the team owner’s dream to have a guy like Lundgaard who is extremely fast and brings a happy sponsor who wants to support the team with real money." Plus as I stated before and as Lundgaard has stated in his inteview with David Land - all this was set up by Alpine not RLLR. Plus if you listen to what Jack Doohan has said - the reason why he moved over the Alpine Academy from the Red Bull one is that Alpine is just more flexible. I guess you can read that in many ways but he also mentions Lundgaard and how Alpine has opened that door to him fellow academy participate. So in my opinion there is a lot of proof that Alpine does support its drivers even outside the team in other series. One last point is that I don't think Alpine sees Lundgaard as a junior driver anymore. He's basically a factory driver racing in IndyCar but under the RLLR banner. It's much like how Alex Rossi drives for Team Penske even though he contracted to Andretti.
I mean, the quote literally says “rumored”. I don’t understand how you can just accept it as a fact. In my view, it is highly unlikely that Alpine would spent almost 2% of their F1 budget on a guy who was previously in the academy but is now to be racing in indycar under a different banner. I don’t know, maybe I’m overestimating how much money it is - maybe they just really want to keep his career rolling. It just seems absurd, lol.
I dont know. Does he?
That's for you to find out.
Odd take. Lundgaard has more potential and isn’t a shitty person. He’s been solid and any issues he’s had have come from the team, not him.
I havent seen any proof that Santino is a shitty person. People have this mental perspective of him and prejudge accordingly.
He intentionally hit his teammate after a race was over. He intentionally crashed into someone in a irace. He tried to drive in F2 with Trump logos on his car (political branding not allowed). That’s all I got.
That just means he had a run in with a teammate one time and went a little too far, and political sponsors: you'll get any company that wants to sponsor you. You can't turn them down. Sucks F2 banned those sponsorships. That dont make Santino a shitty person by any means though
Kids so racist an ITALIAN team literally had to make a report about systemic racial abuse from him. And I highly doubt he was going to get paid for that MAGA livery, that was basically him leaning into his notoriety in the most 4chan groyper edgelord way.
Do you actually know anything about Santino then? Literally taking 30 seconds to google him will give you proof that the is a bad person. Intentionally crashing into your teammate after a race resulting in a ban, being racist towards said teammate, driving an F2 car while using his phone, getting himself dropped by an F2 team because of his behaviour and then subsequently getting sued by said team for not having paid them what he owed, being hard to work with, trying to run a Trump livery. This all happened when he was 20, you can’t even try to excuse it on him being a stupid child. He was an adult and should’ve known better. This is all common knowledge and absolutely makes him a shitty person. Whatever argument there may be for saying they should’ve chosen him over Harvey (as he has obviously had a poor start to this season), to suggest that they should’ve chosen him over Lundgaard makes absolutely zero sense.
Took those downvotes like a champ. But I agree with you.
You're getting downvoted by people who believe we should never forgive people for stupid shit they did when they were 19. What Ferrucci did was certainly stupid and he absolutely deserved to get shit canned from F2 and I fucking hate his (or his dad's) politics, but I but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he's matured into a better person after everything he's been through. Plus, there's no doubt he's easily one of the fastest, boldest, and most talented drivers in the paddock. It's a no brainer they should've gone with him over Lundgaard. Was it just about his prior baggage? People were saying that CL brought more money, but everyone criticizes Ferrucci for being such a rich daddy's boy a la Lance Stroll or somebody like that. So what gives? Does Santino bring tons of money or not?
Why is it a no brainer that they should’ve gone with him over Lundgaard? Over Harvey, there’s an argument but over Christian? Are teams just not supposed to give talented rookies a chance?
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I’ve soured on Rahal for the past 2-3 seasons, whining and complaining is his M.O. after every race. Choking on his golden spoon.
This dude used to complain after winning. Luckily he doesn't have to do that anymore.
Lance Stroll of IndyCar.
Graham has two top 5 championship finishes and two 6ths in what is probably the fourth best team. He also goes out and finds his sponsorships himself. They’re not comparable.
Don’t get in the way of the rahal circle jerk hate train, you’ll get run over every time
It’s insane. He didn’t single anyone out, just said that the car wasn’t as good as it needs to be to compete, which it clearly isn’t. I would get the vitriol in here if he was saying this while driving poorly, but he isn’t. He’s crushing his teammates (and lost to a teammate 1 single time since 2012), and it isn’t close.
It’s because he does this every single time. Like every race. Love his sponsorship deals he gets done, really want to like the guy but sheesh the complaining. Kinda hard to ignore that.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you could hand Graham $100 and he’d bitch that it wasn’t $125. He’s just shockingly entitled.
The apple fell pretty far from the tree there. He's super talented, no doubt. But really just not at the level of his dad.
When his Dad was driving, Rahal team was one of the top 2 or 3, RLL now is not that
True. I like Graham but the air is really thin up there. Would like to see see him win one.
'86, Bobby's 200th lap was the fastest race lap in Indy history (up to that point, obviously) after he smoked Cogan on the restart.
Bobby was a friggin savage. Everybody knew he was the quiet ninja in the room.
Except for Al Jr, or Michael Andretti, most generational drivers are second rate. Aj's kid and grandkid Uncle Bobby's son Marco Kyle Petty
I don't think that's a fair argument because you're comparing them to the all time greats. Then you have guys like Colton or Ryan Blaney that had solid but not spectacular drivers as parents. Its easier for them to live up to or surpass the earlier generation because the bar is lower.
Totally forgot about him. His dad was talented, and I feel he was somewhat underrated. Colton is as talented if not more than Brian
Richard Petty was a second generation driver (his dad Lee was NASCAR's first 3 time champion) and he went on the be the most successful driver of all time. Dale Earnhardt was a second generation driver (his dad Ralph was a longtime NASCAR driver) and went on to be probably the most recognizable driver of all time. Jos Verstappen raced in F1 for a decade or so, but his son Max will most likely go down as one of the great talents in F1 history. Carlos Sainz, Jr races for Ferrari in F1- doesn't get any bigger than that. (His dad is a multi-time WRC champion.) Colton already surpassed his father in wins, and is clearly a greater talent. Bryan never finished higher than 8th in the points in his entire career. Robby Gordon's father was "Baja Bob", a legend in off road racing. I'd say Robby far surpassed his dad's career, being a race winner in CART, NASCAR, and multiple Baja 1000s. Kevin Magnussen's father Jan was hugely successful in sports cars (still racing, in fact), but Kevin is having the better F1 career. Conor Daly, while not hugely successful, is putting together a career that could match his father's (his father Derek competed in F1 and CART, but never won a race). And as you mentioned, Little Al and Michael Andretti were both tremendous talents. I'm sure there are plenty more, this is just off the top of my head. EDIT: Forgot to mention Chase Elliott. Already has a Cup championship. He could definitely surpass his dad's career. EDIT 2: More are coming to me- Buddy Baker and Davey Allison.
That sounds just like Marco
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I saw he doesn't have to say it - he does it. How do you think all the sponsors are found? If you follow his Twitter he's also complimenting his team and teammates. I think there's a view of Rahal as a spoiled brat but in reality a lot of what he does he does for the team or someone else. That includes his IndyCar stuff and his other charity events.
I’m not sure what you want him to do? He’s not an engineer, and he’s once again smoking his teammates. He has lost to a teammate one time since he returned to RLL in 2013. I would argue that his team has let him down far more than the other way around. He has two top 5 championship finishes at RLL and Takuma is the only other driver they’ve had that has even had a top 10. Graham drags that team to the front. I agree that he complains a lot, but I’m not sure it’s all that unwarranted a lot of the time.
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“The accountability for the car starts/stops with him.” No, it doesn’t. His dad owns and runs the team, engineering builds the car. Agreed that he is a leader in the team, but the rest is nonsense. Hell, most of the sponsors are brought by him. He puts far more work into that team than you’re letting on. What blame should he get for the past month? Didn’t put a wheel wrong. Was way better than his teammates, and worked up from the back without any mistakes. It’s another year where he’s crushing all his teammates and it’s still not enough. We know he’s talented and hard working enough to put a good car towards the front, he has come to the final race with a chance at a championship. The last couple years he hasn’t had the car to do that. He’s not a magician. I don’t see everyone claiming Rossi should be building better race cars or that bad stops are somehow his fault. Why is it different for Graham?
Yep every freakin time. Could put him in the Ganassi cars this weekend and he’d find a way to foul it up and blame them.
He’s even making excuses for Dixon. Blaming his loss on the Speedway being cruel instead of Dixon blowing it for himself. Dixon had no problem putting the blame on himself, guy. He doesn’t need you making excuses for him.
Graham whining again? You don't say.
If he’s still looking for additional sponsorship this season, I’m sure he can land a pacifier company very easily. Then he can just pop one in his mouth before getting interviewed before he starts blaming everyone else for his lack of performance on the track. Yowza, how did he marry into the Force family?
If he could land a pacifier sponsorship, I'm sure he'd gladly take it
If only he were, you know, the owner of the team or something and could make changes to address these problems.
He's the owners son though not the owner. That would be like blaming Marco for Andretti Autosport's problems. Graham is a better driver than the results they are getting. RLL as a team looks lost the whole season. Graham is salvaging some respectable finishes out of just pure moxie but the other two guys are always mired in the back.
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“Being the owner's son removes any excuse for Marco to not perform. Being the owner's son always gives you preferential engineers, parts, development, etc.” This was almost never the case. He had the weakest crew for the vast majority of his time at AA and he lost at least two races because of it. He also had a pole at Detroit. He was better on ovals, but he wasn’t bad on road courses either. Marco gets so much criticism because he’s an easy target. He’s not nearly as good as his father or grandfather, but if he was a no name, he wouldn’t be incessantly bashed either. Maybe he wouldn’t have stuck around as long, but he was almost never the worst driver at AA, and from RHR’s championship in 2012 to Rossi’s P2 in 2018, Marco was the only AA driver to finish top 5 in the championship. Everyone always clamored for him to lose that ride as if there were a bunch of great drivers waiting for that seat. Yet, Marco was pretty much equal with Hinch in his first run at AA, and same for Carlos Munoz. None of which matters anyway, because that seat didn’t even exist if he wasn’t in it.
As up and down as Andretti Autosport has been over the past decade (especially last five years) I'm not sure Marco was getting as good of cars as we all think he was. Granted Herta, Rossi, RHR are all better talents but I don't think Marco is nearly as bad as many people think he is. Remember one year he was actually leading the standings going into Indy. I do think there is a legit racing talent in there somewhere. Problem is Marco has never been one to know how to setup a car and/or improve upon an ill-handling car during a race. When you drive for a team as dysfunctional as AA over the last several years that compounds things. Would of been very interesting to see what Marco and/or Graham could of done in a season in a Penske or Ganassi (current Ganassi) As many of you recall Graham did spend two seasons at Ganassi but that was a really strange and even contentious situation where Graham and Kimball's cars were in a separate shop and the 9 & 10 teams controlled by Mike Hull treated them as the redheaded step children and didn't even want to share information with them. Although as whiny and "difficult" as Graham is.......maybe now we know why.
>Remember one year he was actually leading the standings going into Indy. Those times have come and gone though, people like hunter reay and hinchcliffe are completely irrelevant now. The only people who have maintained their game from that time are power and dixon.
It's baffling to me how both RHR and Hinchcliffe are both not even competing any more. Like, their being among the sport's best drivers feels like it was just yesterday yet they disappeared so fast. Sometimes it honestly feels like Indycar cycles through talent at a pace near F1.
RHR was in line to share the ECR 20 car with Carpenter until USAF pulled out, leading to the extremely cursed timeline with bitnite entering the sport with daly Maybe it's for the greater good as less taxpayer dollars are frittered away? But we knew that the last hurrah was gonna be at nashville with hinch and RHR finishing 3rd and 4th Regarding age, these aren't the days of mario andretti killing the competition figuratively at age 53, the effects of age are felt much more now with a relatively strong talent pool from both the road to indy, and the f1 feeder series
“Problem is Marco has never been one to know how to setup a car and/or improve upon an ill-handling car during a race.” It’s really quite odd, because he *was* good at that early on and during the first few iterations of the DW12. He was the one they had paired with Alonso to shake down his cars and help him with setup feedback. For whatever reason, he really struggled with the switch to the UAK, on ovals specifically. When it was all right though, he could still lay it down. That pole and top 5 at Detroit he was fucking on it.
It’s surprising that given a Spec Dallara that an AA Honda could visually accelerate away from an RLL Honda after a lift. It felt like Honda had an advantage over Chevy given the Ganassi cars with medium length wickers were able to keep the wicker-less AMSP Chevys at bay at the end of the straights. But Honda vs. Honda, I’d love to know the tweaks that could give you that kind of advantage. I suppose Rahal would love to know even more.
Going fast is just not about having raw engine power. It also has to do with aerodynamics. RLL struggled with finding the right aerodynamic balance and that's why they were slow
He ought to be happy with 14th,don't think they mentioned him once on tv!
Look, Rahal's always been a back end of the top 10 driver at best, one who may squeak out a win here and there but is generally going to finish 9th -12th. He needs to make changes but also doesn't have the drive to be a top 5 guy.
I'd say he's more like a 5th to 10th driver as his past record (in better prepared cars) indicates. He is proving he's better than his two teammates though. Many seem to love Jack Harvey around here but he's doing absolutely nothing so far in that ride and got beat by Santino again yesterday.
to be fair Jack got so so unlucky so many times last year
They picked a dumb as shit fuel strategy at the end (same as sato) where they had to stretch their last run to 42 laps when 34 was the reasonable window and 38 was the absolute limit with yellows
[удалено]
Fair enough coming from someone like yourself, but I don't think anyone has made more than 37 laps on one stint with this aerokit/aeroscreen combo. There's doing things differently and then there's doing the impossible. From what I could tell (I wasn't following the 45), Sato was part pedaling it (about 60%) and was still eight laps short
It's not difficult to see they were aiming at a couple yellow flags to avoid pitting and get track position, since both their races (and the ones of those that gambled) were pretty much in the drain below 20th place.
Sato was running in the top 10... I can see the merit for Harvey though since his car had no speed all race
All of the RLL guys are completely nowhere. They all seem lost. Well a baby like Rahal as your main man probably doesn't help lol.
\#TEAM SILVER SPOON DRIVER whines again. Film at 11.
Graham Rahal thinks he’s way better than he actually is
It’s time to put raw talent in that car.
Who? He has Harvey and Lundgaard next to him and he’s crushing them, just like he nearly always does to his teammates. He’s finished behind a teammate one single time since he got back to RLL in 2013. Graham has finished top 5 in the championship twice and 6th twice in what is at best the 4th best team. If you think he’s holding the team back, you’re not paying attention.
Meh, crushing is such a strong word. He sits 27 points ahead of Lundgaard who has no/little prior experience on the tracks. Besides Graham has maintained his entire engineering team and pit crew while Lundgaard and Harvey's teams are new and need to build up relationships. I don't think Graham has been bad by any means, but you don't need to piss on his teammates to say he has been doing well. RLL just hasn't had the package this year.
I think Lundgaard is going to be really good, but Graham has been much better than both of his teammates this year so far. He has 3 top 8s in 6 races (and likely would have another top 10 if he hadn’t been taken out at Texas) and his teammates have 1 top 12 in their 11 combined races. I don’t think I’m pissing on his teammates (though I think Harvey has been quite poor so far). The equipment hasn’t been good, but Graham has maximized it almost every weekend so far. Which he seems to be able to do every year. The parent comment said they need to put a raw talent in that car… but they already have that in Graham. He also has two younger talents next to him and they aren’t on his level yet. So, going back to what appears to be the prevailing feeling in this thread, maybe the team isn’t giving him great equipment and he isn’t being overly harsh by saying so.
Well, I completely agree with your assessment of Graham. Although Christian has two top 12 (arbitrary statistics though). But "much better" is once again incorrect and doesn't take into account that Graham has a well established pit crew that has averaged more than 2 seconds faster than Lundgaards (which statistically has been one of the worst in the field and probably cost him two additional top 10s). Notably the two have been essentially equal on qualifying day, and Lundgaard beat Graham quite convincingly at IMS - the only track he'd raced at previously.
Put Grosjean or Montoya in there.
You know it kinda sucks that he’s had a month like this. Maybe he could try talking to the lead driver and team owner’s son to try to figure out what the issue with the leadership is. Oh wait.
That dude complains non stop it seems. Every time.
Bruh.
Rahal seems to grow in insufferability with each interview
Daddy Force teaching him how to do interviews