Pact starts this weekend at Toronto
Newman/Haas Racing and driver Graham Rahal have confirmed that they will team up and run in six of the final eight events in this year’s IZOD IndyCar Series championship, starting this weekend at the Honda Indy Toronto. He will drive the No. 02, a second entry for NHR alongside their regular driver, Hideki Mutoh.
Rahal will also race at the Mid-Ohio, Infineon, Motegi, Chicagoland, and Homestead-Miami rounds.
This marks the first time Rahal has raced with NHR since the end of the 2009 season. Sponsorship problems knocked him out of the seat at NHR and this year, he’s raced with multiple squads like Sarah Fisher Racing (St. Pete, Barber, Long Beach), Rahal-Letterman Racing (Indianapolis), and Dreyer and Reinbold Racing (Iowa).
Autosport also reports that QuickTrim, Rahal’s sponsor at the Indianapolis 500, will be giving ‘extra backing’ to the American driver for this deal — which leads one to believe that the company enjoyed the exposure that it received at the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.
This is a pretty big win for Rahal, who’s had to scrap for sponsorship throughout the season, as well as for NHR, who gets an old driver of theirs back for a while. It’ll be interesting to see if the chemistry is still there and if NHR can give him solid equipment that will enable him to contend for good results.
