Bobby Rahal steers his son in the right direction

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Bobby Rahal likes to take a hands-off approach in the career of his 20-year-old son, Graham.

Even so, the winner of three open-wheel championships and the 1986 Indianapolis 500 will offer his counsel when he thinks the time is right.

This offseason, which followed his son’s rookie season in the IndyCar Series, was one of those times.

“I told him at one point, ‘You know, you can make this your team, but you’ve got to do the work. You just can’t show up and drive the car,’ ” the elder Rahal explained. “I said, ‘You’ve got to be part of the team. You’ve got to get everybody to work for you, with you. The way you do that is by being more than just a driver. You [become] a human being to them. You want to be a leader.’ “

That’s a daunting task for a driver barely out of his teens racing for an elite team in American open-wheel racing that won eight championships and 105 victories in CART and its now-defunct successor Champ Car.

After playing a junior role to four-time Champ Car champion Sebastien Bourdais in 2007, Graham Rahal’s Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing team was one of the teams that made the difficult transition to IndyCar at the start of 2008 as part of the unification of American open-wheel racing.

Veteran Justin Wilson was hired as Rahal’s teammate and it was the British driver who was considered the team leader last year.

With Wilson now driving for Dale Coyne Racing, Rahal is carrying most of his team’s expectations despite the experience of new teammate Robert Doornbos of The Netherlands.

“I think it doesn’t only come from me,” Graham Rahal said. “Obviously, everybody’s got to improve. Last year was a tough year for everybody, for the entire team.

“Surely, everybody needs to up their level and I do more than anybody. We need to win races this year. We need to contend in the end. And, the way that I look at it, I see no reason why that shouldn’t be possible. We should be able to be competitive.” That’s a big order, considering what took place last year.

The former Champ Car teams and drivers had only six weeks to prepare for the 2008 season, and they spent the entire year playing catch-up to the traditional IndyCar teams, particularly on the oval tracks after coming from a series that was mostly run on circuits with left and right turns.

Rahal crashed in a preseason test on the oval at Homestead-Miami Speedway and had to skip the season-opener at that track. He surprised everyone by winning his IndyCar debut on the streets of St. Petersburg, Fla. — at 19, the youngest driver ever to win a major open-wheel event — then struggled through most of the rest of the season.