Rainy Start to Qualifying Reminds Rahal of Wet Route to Reigning in 1986

As a downpour sent race teams and fans scurrying for cover Saturday afternoon, Bobby Rahal was reminded of when it wouldn’t stop raining at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1986.

“We sat around and watched it rain for four days,” he said. “Just sitting there, sitting there, sitting there, sitting there.”

The Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing co-owner was sitting and waiting in the team’s hospitality tent as he shared the memory. He hoped his two cars — son Graham’s No. 15 Steak ’n’ Shake Honda and Oriol Servia’s No. 16 Manitowoc Honda — would eventually get a chance to qualify for the 101st Running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by PennGrade Motor Oil.

The elder Rahal had already consumed a bison burger. The next priority would be to find someplace comfortable. As soon as the precipitation would let up, he intended to hop in a golf cart and head to his motorhome.

Thirty-one years ago, there weren’t such creature comforts. It was so different from today.

The 1986 Indianapolis 500 was the first for a remodeled Gasoline Alley, reconstructed with 96 concrete garages. It was also the first year for a new Victory Lane, which last for seven years. The Borg-Warner Trophy celebrated its 50th year.

Team Penske’s Rick Mears won the pole, the third of his record six in the Indy 500. Rahal qualified fourth, on the inside of row two, in his red No. 3 Budweiser Truesports March 86C owned by Jim Trueman.

The race almost began on two occasions on its scheduled day, Sunday, May 25.

“There were a couple times when it looked like it was going to dry up,” Rahal said. “You’d start to think about, ‘OK, now it’s time to get ready.’ And it would start raining again. And it rained hard, literally three days straight. I remember this place was just a mud pit.

“You’ve been working all month for that day, and then it doesn’t come. Then it doesn’t come. Then it doesn’t come. For me, I felt a little keyed up.”

Budweiser had leased a trailer, where Rahal hung out and played cards or watched television. Or he ventured back to his hotel room at a nearby Red Roof Inn on Crawfordsville Road.

“I stayed there a lot,” Rahal said of the hotel. “I watched TV or slept. Nothing to do. It was a different era in that respect. We didn’t have cell phones in those days to entertain yourself. You’re sitting there every day for six to eight hours thinking that at any minute they could call you and tell you it was time to go. There was a lot of sleeping.”

He laughed about the old weather adage often uttered at IMS, about how the radar showed clearing skies to the west.

“There’s always a window over Terre Haute,” he said, smiling.

IMS eventually decided to postpone the race to the following Saturday, May 31.

“I was eating downtown at Union Station,” Rahal said. “I was having dinner when that word came out it had been postponed to Saturday. I said, ‘Thank God.’ I was out of here. Enough waiting.

“I went home and played in a golf tournament, a pro-am at Muirfield Village. That was kind of what I needed. I needed to get out of here, go home for a day or two.”

He didn’t hit those golf balls particularly well, just average by his standards, but the links allowed him to decompress.

“I came back refreshed and ready to go,” Rahal said. “And then it was a beautiful day.”

Rahal’s chief concern was Mears, who five years later joined A.J. Foyt and Al Unser as the Indy 500’s only four-time winners.

“We had enough pace for Mears, and (Kevin) Cogan came late to the party,” Rahal said. “He was driving the wheels off the car. We had a good car and led a lot of laps.

Rahal led 58 laps, 18 fewer than Mears. But Rahal led the most important lap, the 200th and final one.

He jumped Cogan on a restart with two laps remaining and drove to victory in a life-changing accomplishment that would be memorable for more than just the rain and the race. Eleven days later, Trueman lost his battle with cancer and died at the age of 51.

“It was a great day for us, and a great day for Jim,” Rahal said.

Looking back now, he shrugs off those four days of rain.

“It was worth the wait,” he said.

Visit IMS.com to purchase tickets for the 101st Indianapolis 500 Presented by PennGrade Motor Oil on Sunday, May 28, and for more information on the complete Month or May schedule at IMS.