GRAHAM RAHAL, No. 15 One Cure Dallara/Honda/Firestone: "I couldn't see anything in front of me. Obviously I'm disappointed for One Cure. We were hoping for a strong day. I don't know what happened in front of us but it was a cluster. I couldn't see anything and I had nowhere to go. We made it through Turn 1 and 2 and I thought 'Hey, clear sailing here' and then bam. From what I hear, it sounds like Veach just put Hinch up on the curb which is pretty unfair. As you can see Dixie doing behind us, you can run two wide through there no problem. I'm disappointed. A lot of guys were driving aggressively, which is okay, but we've got to give each other room."
FAST FACTS: He started 10th and had gotten through Turns 1 and 2, which was expected to be action-packed, and after getting through Turn 2 Zach Veach squeezed James Hinchcliffe and the two made contact which set off a multi-car crash that collected James Hinchcliffe, Marco Andretti, Rahal, points-leader Scott Dixon and his teammate Ed Jones. Rahal's car was too damaged to continue so it was towed back to the paddock and after more than one hour he returned to the track to complete a handful of laps to collect two championship points, which was the maximum possible… It was the fourth overall race for Graham at PIR and second in the headline event. He competed in the 2007 Champ Car World Series race where he started eighth and finished ninth in his rookie season for Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing. He started from pole in the Atlantics race here in 2006 but was hit by Simon Pagenaud on Lap 1 and finished 27th. In 2005, he earned his first professional win at PIR in the Star Mazda race after starting fourth and winning by a margin of 0.0317 seconds over James Hinchcliffe. Has SIX IndyCar Series wins (2008 - St. Pete street course; 2015 - Fontana Super Speedway, Mid-Ohio road course; 2016 - Texas oval; 2017 - Race 1 & 2 Detroit streets) and THREE poles (2009 - St. Pete street course, Kansas oval; 2017 - Detroit Race 1 street). His highest series season-ending standing is fourth place in 2015. He is currently ranked fourth in series standings with 63 points. He maintained his eighth place rank in series point standings with 378 points but lost ground to fifth place Ryan Hunter-Reay, who finished third.