{"id":52271,"date":"2016-03-02T16:15:37","date_gmt":"2016-03-02T16:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/issue_content\/goron-kirby\/"},"modified":"2019-07-19T15:49:52","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T14:49:52","slug":"gordon-kirby","status":"publish","type":"issue_content","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/archive\/article\/october-2015\/41\/gordon-kirby\/","title":{"rendered":"Gordon Kirby"},"content":{"rendered":"

A change for the better<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in 2009, at only 19, Graham Rahal became IndyCar\u2019s youngest winner. Since then his career has floundered. Many people began to write him off, but he has bounced back in style this year, winning two mid-season races and pushing himself into a title battle with Juan Pablo Montoya and Scott Dixon.<\/p>\n

Graham has driven for his father Bobby\u2019s team over the past three years and, after two disappointing campaigns, Bobby made some major changes. He promoted Eddie Jones to be his son\u2019s race engineer and hired Mike Talbott and Martin Pare, both formerly with Newman\/Haas, to lead his team\u2019s vehicle dynamics and R&D departments. Rahal also promoted long-time employee Ricardo Nault to team manager. \u201cI decided I was going to get out of the way and let those guys do their jobs, and the proof is in the pudding,\u201d Rahal says. \u201cRicardo has done a fantastic job running the team. He\u2019s a racer\u2019s racer, very competitive, and has developed a very good working relationship among the crew.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest by-product of all these changes is that the atmosphere in the organisation is 180 degrees from where it had been. My job is now to find the funding, make the big picture decisions and give those guys the tools they need to do their jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bobby also made the decision to take himself off the team\u2019s timing stand. \u201cI loved being on the radio with Graham,\u201d he says, \u201cbut it was clear there were times when emotions ran high. I said to Graham last winter that we need to get the emotion out of it. I said we needed to be less passionate and one way to achieve that was for me to walk away and observe from elsewhere. I still help out by spotting, but I think not being on the timing stand has proven to be a positive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham agrees wholeheartedly with his father. \u201cPutting Eddie, Martin and Mark together has been like magic,\u201d he says, with a grin. \u201cThey clicked from the very beginning and everything worked. There\u2019s never any second-guessing and we\u2019ve made the car\u2019s handling significantly better.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s doubly impressive that Rahal has achieved so much this year because he\u2019s a one-car team competing against the four-car operations from Penske, Ganassi and Andretti. \u201cThe focus on a single car can be powerful if you can figure out the basic set-ups that the driver likes,\u201d Bobby says. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a negative being a one-car team, but you have to have a very hard-working, committed group of people to get the right kind of results. I think putting all the focus on one entity is pretty powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bobby couldn\u2019t be more pleased with Graham\u2019s performances this year. He says: \u201cSelf-confidence in a driver is probably the most powerful of all the tools a team has. Graham is very confident when it comes to the races and very confident in the work the engineers are doing. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think Graham is one of the best racers out there. When raceday comes he goes to the front and doesn\u2019t make mistakes. He\u2019s not over-driving the car and has it set up the way he likes it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we\u2019re seeing the real Graham. I think we\u2019re seeing the Graham we saw in 2009, but it\u2019s a better Graham because he\u2019s that much more mature. At 26, it\u2019s like everything has come together. He\u2019s in a good place and we\u2019re seeing the effects of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As well as emerging this year as a serious force in IndyCar, Graham will get married at the end of November to NHRA drag racing star Courtney Force, a daughter of drag legend John Force. Life couldn\u2019t be better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":742,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"tags":[167,207],"issue_decade":[121600],"issue_year":[121672],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/52271"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/52271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225550,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/52271\/revisions\/225550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52271"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=52271"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=52271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}