Despite crash, Rahal feels ready for ovals

Yesterday we posed this question to Graham Rahal – You're quite comfortable already in the IRL on the road and street courses, how do you feel about ovals? Do you feel like you need more testing and will you have an opportunity to do more testing before the next IndyCar race?

"Well, you know, surprisingly, even on the oval, I felt very comfortable," said Rahal. "I went out and right away, testing at Homestead my fifth lap was 205.9 or something. I was talking to Will Power after and he was telling me how he's out there pushing hard and he had already done like 60 laps and comes behind me and can't get by me and he had seen me just come out of the pit.

"You know, I felt fine on the oval, and our cars were good. My incident was unfortunate because it was a situation where no one else had run where I was and since everybody was out there trying to see how quick their cars could go, you know, we are running around the bottom and when I passed Servia and crashed, I had to go up high.

"So I feel fine on the oval. It's different, obviously, because on an oval, they set the car up where the steering wheel is tilted right and your head is crooked to the left. So coming out of the pits, quite a different feeling, but I've got no problem with the car. It's a nice car to drive and it's different, but you know, it's just fine."