Rahal Takes Pole and Makes His Point

Bobby Rahal continued his late-season surge toward the Indy car driving championship by putting together a lap of 126.283 m.p.h. on a hot and humid Saturday that slowed most of his competitors at Laguna Seca Raceway.

The quick lap around the twisting 1.9-mile road course in his red March-Cosworth accomplished two purposes for Rahal. First, it gained him one point in the torrid six-driver chase for the CART/PPG Indy Car World Series championship, which pays $300,000 to the winner. Secondly, it put him on the pole for today’s $400,000 Stroh’s 300-kilometer race, in which 20 points go to the race winner and one more to the driver leading the most laps.

Rahal came up short of Mario Andretti’s year-old track record of 126.596 m.p.h., but his speed bettered Friday’s fast lap of 125.555 posted by Indianapolis 500 winner Danny Sullivan in another March. As 85-degree heat smothered the Monterey Peninsula in a record October heat wave, Sullivan was unable to improve on his Friday speed.

“I was surprised that we ran faster today because of the temperature,” Rahal said.

Going into Race 13 of the 15-race Indy car season, Al Unser Jr. has 106 points, Al Unser 101, Emerson Fittipaldi 99, Mario Andretti 98, Sullivan 89 and Rahal 87.

“You never know how important that point might be at the end,” said the scholarly Rahal, a history graduate of Denison University. “Look what happened last year in Formula One.”

Niki Lauda edged McLaren teammate Alain Prost by one-half point in that series.

“Being on the pole sure beats the hell out of being surrounded by people,” Rahal continued. It is the fourth straight race in which he has won the pole and sixth this season in 12 races.

Rahal comes into the race as the hottest driver on the Indy car circuit. He has won two of the last three races, first on a road circuit at Mid-Ohio owned by his car owner, Jim Trueman, and then two weeks ago on the high-banked oval at Michigan. In the last three races, he has picked up 48 points while most of the other leaders were having difficulty finishing.

“The leaders are now looking over their shoulders, and that’s when mistakes can happen,” Rahal said. “I really like our chances. In our position, we can run aggressively. We don’t have to worry about protecting our lead. That’s another time when strange things can go wrong.”

Rahal is also running on a course where he has won. He beat Andretti in a tough Indy car race here last year and also won a Can-Am race at Laguna Seca in 1979.

“Certainly, it doesn’t hurt your confidence to be coming to a track where you’ve won,” Rahal said. “But it really doesn’t mean anything--except you had everything put together the day you won. This is a different year.”

Even though Rahal was on the front row in the season’s first two races, at Long Beach and Indianapolis, he and the TrueSports team had abysmal early-season luck. He finished only one of six races and had five points, while Andretti led at the time with 83, followed by the Unsers, tied at 63.

“It looked pretty bleak at that point,” Rahal said, “but you never want to give up hope because it’s easy to let down if you do that. You don’t want to wish anyone ill, but we’ve been fortunate that the guys ahead of us have been having trouble finishing races.

“That’s a funny thing about racing. There are times when whatever you do, it isn’t enough. Then there are times when whatever you do, it’s right.”

Mario Andretti lost an engine in his Lola during qualifying, but his crew expects to have a new engine in place for the race. Not so fortunate was Ed Pimm, in Dan Gurney’s Eagle. He got off in the dirt after qualifying 15th, bounced around and damaged the underbody so extensively that it may not be repairable in time for the race.