June 28--Graham Rahal's first career IndyCar victory came when he was 19 years old. His second victory came seven years later when it finally arrived on Saturday at the MAVTV 500 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.
Rahal, who qualified 19th, slowly moved up the leaderboard in the latter half of the race, barely beating out Tony Kanaan in its final moments.
"This is a big, big deal for us." Rahal said. "To kind of rebound the way we have all season, this feels good to win for sure ... but it's been a good year. We've shown that it wasn't a one-hit wonder."
Rahal's win moves him into fourth place in the IndyCar Series points standings. His full-on sprint to the finish line was the result of a red flag restart triggered by a crash involving Takuma Sato and Will Power.
On the last lap of the afternoon, there was one more collision -- this time involving Ryan Briscoe and Ryan Hunter-Reay -- that sent Briscoe's car airborne. Both drivers emerged unscathed, but Kanaan, who was the 2014 winner of the MAVTV 500, expressed concerns with the pack race mentality and dangerous crashes that occurred.
"We can't forget that we lost my best friend in exactly the same way in 2011," Kanaan said of Dan Wheldon, who died after a collision during a 2011 IndyCar race at Las Vegas. "I understand what the fans want. If you say we're going to have 100,000 people and this is what we're going to do, I might agree with you that we need to put it out there. To have 5,000 people out there and do this, it's stupid."
For 135 laps, there were no crashes and no yellow flags. That changed when Helio Castroneves found himself squished between a surging Briscoe and Power. Castroneves made contact with Briscoe and spun into the wall.
"I'll tell you what: It was a long ride going sideways," Castroneves said in a TV interview after the crash.
Marco Andretti finished third, while pole winner Simon Pagenaud ended up ninth. Pagenaud almost immediately dropped off the pole position at the start of the race, but he wasn't alone in that regard. There were 80 lead changes in total, which is an IndyCar record. The previous high of 73 was set 14 years ago.
