A documentary on Bobby Rahal, the 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner, is set to debut Friday night on FOX Sports 1, arriving as the victory’s 40th anniversary nears. The project took Travis Long four years to make.
Graham Rahal said this week at an NTT IndyCar Series press conference that he had not seen the film yet, but he said he was eager to see how it captures his father’s career and influence. He said he is proud of Bobby Rahal’s accomplishments in racing, as a father, as a businessman and as an entrepreneur.
“I’ve not seen it. I probably should have, but I have not,” Graham Rahal said. “I’m just really interested to see what all they showcase. I’m very proud of him with everything that he’s been able to accomplish, not only in this sport, but as a father, as a businessman, as an entrepreneur.”
The documentary focuses on a figure whose name still carries weight in IndyCar nearly four decades after he drove to victory at Indianapolis. Bobby Rahal is now an NTT IndyCar Series team co-owner, and the release is being timed around the approaching 40th anniversary of that win.
For Graham Rahal, the film is also a family reckoning. He said much of what he tries to do each day is to follow his father’s example by building businesses outside racing so the sport can remain part of his life after driving ends. He described Bobby Rahal as methodical, a great racer and someone who understood how to put the right people around him.
“A lot of what I do each and every day of my life is to strive to be like him: to build businesses, to do things outside of racing so that racing can continue for many years of my life to be a passion that I can be involved in after driving, which is exactly what he has done,” Graham Rahal said. “Dad was such a methodical thinker and just such a great racer that he was able to have tremendous success.”
That approach, he said, showed up not only on the track but also in the way Bobby Rahal built teams and companies. Graham Rahal pointed to longtime team executives Jimmy Prescott, Clay Filson and Ricardo Nault, saying they have been with the Rahal family for 40 years or more. He also cited the hiring of Ron Ferris as chief executive of Bobby Rahal Automotive Group as another example of that eye for talent.
“They become part of the family,” Graham Rahal said. “If you look at the success of the car dealerships and hiring Ron Ferris to be the guy [CEO of Bobby Rahal Automotive Group], my dad has always been superb at having that eye.”
The documentary’s timing gives it a clear edge: it lands just as Rahal’s 1986 Indianapolis 500 victory comes back into focus, and as the next generation of the family reflects on how that win helped shape everything that followed. Graham Rahal, described as the veteran among the trio at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, framed his father’s legacy not as a trophy case but as a blueprint.
That is what makes the release matter now. The film is not simply revisiting a famous race result. It is arriving at a moment when the family name still sits at the center of IndyCar, and when Bobby Rahal’s influence can still be measured in the people, businesses and racing programs built around him.
