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Memories and Wins Have Abounded Over 50 Years for Bobby Rahal in Monterey
May 6, 2025
By John Oreovicz
IMSA Wire Service
Rahal Straight: Bobby Loves WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca
Memories and Wins Have Abounded Over 50 Years for Bobby Rahal in Monterey
May 6, 2025
By John Oreovicz
IMSA Wire Service
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – To paraphrase Chico Escuela, a fictional baseball star played by Garrett Morris on Saturday Night Live in the late 1970s, WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca has been very, very good to Bobby Rahal.
Beyond his Indianapolis 500 victory and three IndyCar championships, Rahal is feted for his four consecutive IndyCar wins at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca from 1984-87. His IndyCar team then claimed victory three times in a four-year stretch at the famous road racing venue near Monterey, California from 1998-2001; that prompted the track to rename the uphill stretch linking Turn 6 to the iconic “Corkscrew” sequence the Rahal Straight.
But Rahal’s competitive history at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca dates to 1976 – when he drove a March Formula Atlantic car fielded by Doug Shierson Racing during the first season IMSA sanctioned a series of races for compact open-wheel cars.
That May weekend got off to a tough start, as Bobby failed to set a qualifying time and dropped out of his heat after just five laps. But it all came together in the main event; Rahal worked through the 32-car field to finish fifth in a race won by Gilles Villeneuve over Elliott Forbes-Robinson, who was recently announced as a 2025 inductee for the IMSA Hall of Fame.
In a second IMSA-sanctioned Atlantic weekend in October ‘76, Rahal won his heat from the pole over EFR, but finished the feature 14th, a lap behind winner Price Cobb (another future sports car star).
“Going out to race my first race in 1976 in Formula Atlantic, Laguna was everything I had hoped it would be,” Rahal recalled. “You know, I’d read about it as a kid, back in the Midwest, and I thought it was one of the crown jewels of American road racing circuits. It was a thrill then, and it’s a thrill even today to continue to come back there.”
After a stint racing in Europe in Formula 3 and Formula 2, Bobby returned to America and scored his first major sports car victory in a 1979 SCCA CanAm race at…you guessed it, WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. In 1983, he coaxed a rare finish out of the fast-but-finicky Ford Mustang GTP to claim a trip to IMSA’s Monterey podium.
Those achievements, when combined with Bobby’s success at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca as a team owner (which includes a run of three WeatherTech Championship GT Le Mans class wins for BMW M Team RLL in four years from 2015 to 2018; 2015 pictured right) inspired WeatherTech Raceway to name Rahal as Grand Marshal for this weekend’s TireRack.com Monterey SportsCar Championship.
“It’s a great honor and privilege to be the Grand Marshal at obviously what is one of my favorite tracks,” Rahal remarked. “There’s been a lot of success there, both as a driver and as an owner. It’s a real thrill to have part of the racetrack named after you, I have to say. I’m excited about the upcoming week and looking forward to good things.”
BMW M Team RLL fields the Nos. 24 and 25 entries in the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class of the WeatherTech Championship, and three races into the 2025 season, it has consistently been Porsche Penske Motorsport’s closest competitor. Dries Vanthoor has earned the Motul Pole Award at all three events, and he and No. 24 co-driver Philipp Eng rank third in the standings behind the No. 7 and No. 6 Porsche driver pairings.
Rahal is optimistic that his WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca karma and the single-lap speed of the BMW M Hybrid V8 can combine for yet another memorable Monterey moment.
“We’ve had three poles with the GTP program this year, which is exciting, and that’s all credit to Dries and the team,” Rahal said. “Dries’ pace in qualifying…he’s obviously the fastest guy out there. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to quite put it all together come race day. Lapped traffic at Daytona and Sebring hurt our chances at the end of the race, and looking at Long Beach, we got held up in the pits a little bit and that’s all it took, I’m afraid.
“We’ve got to hopefully complete the job this time around,” he added. “We were pretty quick at Laguna last year, so I feel that we have a reasonable chance. We just have to complete the job.”
Like all GTP competitors, BMW M Team RLL recognizes Porsche has done an excellent job extracting speed from its cars in race conditions. Rahal believes that BMW is right with Porsche on pace and could have translated the Long Beach pole into a win with a quicker pit stop.
“Long Beach highlighted some areas maybe where we need to focus a bit more of our efforts – pit lane in particular,” said Rahal. “I think we’re going to come into Laguna with some new things on that front. It’s a constant state of trying to improve not just the car, but ourselves. And I think the Laguna track, especially since they repaved it, has kind of come into our wheelhouse a bit. Our car has been fast since they’ve done that.”
WeatherTech Raceway’s original 1.9-mile layout grew to the current 2.238 miles after 1987. That extension added what is now called the Andretti Hairpin and the Turn 3-4-5 run through the dry lakebed. All four of Rahal’s IndyCar wins therefore came on the original layout, which featured a very fast stretch linking the lap’s traditional final corner to the exit of Turn 5 and up the Rahal Straight.
“I liked the original circuit for obvious reasons, but I think the new circuit is great,” Rahal said with a laugh. “It’s like it’s more of a circuit, for sure. You know, the old one really tested your courage in a couple places. The new one still does and of course, now that they’ve repaved it (for the first time since 2007, completed prior to the 2024 IMSA weekend), it’s much faster than it was before. So, courage is a good, valuable talent or aspect to have.”
Like many in the racing industry, Rahal is enthusiastic about the stability and positive energy that the Friends of Laguna Seca management group have finally secured for the track after decades of conflict with local government and residents about the future of the facility. WeatherTech Raceway is located within the Laguna Seca Recreation Area, on the grounds of the former Fort Ord Army base.
“I’m so pleased with the new management, because these people are committed to the circuit,” observed Rahal. “They’re go-getters. They’re committed to growing the public acceptance of the events to get back to the kinds of crowds that we had back in the glory days of the 1980s and ‘90s. I think that there’s really a clear mandate by the county and everybody involved with the track to really take it to the next level.
“As I mentioned earlier, I call it one of the crown jewels of American road racing circuits,” he added. “It’s been around a long, long time and the world’s greatest drivers and motorcycle riders have raced there over the years. I’m super supportive of anything that can take the circuit to a higher level, and I know so many people in the organization have that passion for Laguna Seca and for motor racing. I think it’s in pretty good hands right now.”
The TireRack.com Monterey SportsCar Championship at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca is highlighted by a 2-hour, 40-minute “sprint” race for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. NBC will host the live television broadcast from 3-6 p.m. ET Sunday, May 11, with domestic streaming available on Peacock. International viewers can view flag-to-flag action on IMSA’s YouTube channel.
