The 70-year-old, who won the 1986 Indy 500 as a driver and the 2004 and 2020 races as a team owner, underwent triple bypass heart surgery last June after being told by doctors that he’d suffered a heart attack in May.
Speaking on Sunday after his driver Christian Lundgaard won the Toronto IndyCar race – the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team’s first win in the series since Takuma Sato’s 2020 Indy 500 triumph – Rahal said the poor performance of his squad at this year’s event and the following Detroit Grand Prix had a negative impact on him.
“I'm 70 years old, and the month of May took a real toll on me,” said Rahal, whose son Graham failed to qualify for the 500 in his team’s car. “I wasn't sleeping well at night. We're not here to fricking play around or to be part of it. We're here to win.
“A year ago in June, I had open heart surgery. This May, I mean, it knocked me back a few steps because I'm not here just to show up.
“I just said right after that, we're going to create and instil and initiate the Indy recovery plan, which we're in the process of doing, which is all about looking into why we performed so poorly and fixing those issues so that next May we're fighting for the pole, and that's our goal.”
Source: Autosport