When Graham Rahal takes the green flag for the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday afternoon, he will be in a mostly unfamiliar car.
He has had a couple hours to get used to the Dreyer and Reinbold entry, along with its Chevrolet engine, but that is hardly enough time to feel fully at home in the cockpit.
The veteran has done his best to get up to speed in the few days he’s known which car he would be driving, including getting a new seat made and changing a few buttons on the steering wheel.
All the little items that could be addressed were completed quickly, and together they have helped Rahal feel comfortable despite him not knowing many details about his car.
“Everybody at Dreyer and Reinbold, and their partnership with Cusick Motorsports, everything so far has been really good,” said Rahal. “It is very weird, and they will tell you that.
“I certainly know as little about my car and the engine as I’ve ever know about anything I’ve driven in my entire life. But it’s a racecar, and ultimately you’re going to go out there tomorrow and try to get it better, and try to go perform on Sunday.
“I think they did a great job. The steering wheel had a couple suggestions – the wheel was never going to be identical to mine, but hey let’s put this button over here just to try to stop me from making an error.
“For instance, their pit lane speed button was where my radio button is. Well, I certainly don’t want to hit those inadvertently. We did a few things like that, but the seat fit went really well.
“I’ll thank the guys at RLL too. I know how hard this time is for them, but Josh [Junge] and Shawn Ford and those guys brought over right away my pedal faces, brought over my seat, gave them measurements for my steering wheel spacer, did a lot to make the transition a heck of a lot easier.
“I already felt comfortable [during the 15 minute shakedown on Thursday.] The only thing I can’t do is change the steering wheel. But we’ll make it work.”
Rahal will start from the very back of the field, a required setback that was brought on by Stefan Wilson’s injury and the necessary driver change in the #24 entry.
