The 27th Lake Mirror Classic

Robert “Bobby” Woodward Rahal was born in Medina, Ohio, in 1953, and worked his way up through the racing ranks, starting with the SCCA’s feeder series to Formula Atlantic and then on to European Formula Two. In an 18-year career spanning F1, Can-Am, Le Mans and IMSA, and CART, he notched three CART championships, including a win at the 1986 Indy 500, along with wins at the 1981 “24 Hours of Daytona” and the 1987 “12 Hours of Sebring.”

One of open-wheel racing’s most consistent drivers, Rahal started 264 races for five teams and took 18 poles and 24 wins. He collected back-to-back CART championships in 1986 and 1987, then picked up his third in 1992. When Buddy Rice won the 2004 Indy 500 for his team, Rahal became one of only a handful of individuals to win the Indy 500 as both a driver and a team owner.

Following his retirement from competitive racing after the 1998 season, Rahal spent time with Jaguar’s Formula 1 effort, and in mid-2000 he returned to the United States to become the interim boss of CART. Along with former late-night talk-show icon David Letterman and businessman Michael Lanigan, he is a principal in Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, where he has overseen the growth of the team from a one-car program into a multi-car, multi-discipline organization. He has been responsible for finding and developing some of the top young talent in open-wheel racing, among them his son Graham Rahal, Takuma Sato, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Christian Lundgaard, 2004 Indy 500 winner Buddy Rice, and Danica Patrick. It was also Bobby Rahal who brought Honda into North American open-wheel racing in the early 1990s, an involvement as a manufacturer that has produced 21 drivers’ championships, 11 manufacturers’ championships, and 298 victories, including 16 Indy 500 triumphs from 2004 to 2025.

His team also won the 2010 GT team and manufacturers championships in the American Le Mans Series with BMW, swept the top two spots in the 2011 Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring, and secured the 2011 ALMS GT drivers championships for Joey Hand and Dirk Mueller. From 2014 to 2021, BMW Team RLL competed in the GTLM class of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with a two-car program, bringing their total to 22 wins, including the 2019 and 2020 Rolex 24 at Daytona endurance races, and taking the 2020 Michelin Endurance Championship.

For 2022, BMW M Team RLL competed in the GTD Pro class while ramping up for the much-anticipated LMDh class of IMSA in 2023. For 2026, the team formed RLL Team McLaren, a multi-year collaboration with McLaren Automotive that returns the team to IMSA’s GTD PRO class with the McLaren GT3 EVO. Across more than four decades, Bobby Rahal has done it all: won on the biggest stages as a driver, built championship-winning teams as an owner, and helped shape the manufacturers and drivers who define American racing today.