Graham Rahal brought his No. 15 Honda home runner-up in last Saturday’s NTT INDYCAR Series Race in Indianapolis. That makes up his bad luck at the start of last month’s season opener at Texas.

Now, Rahal heads to one of his best tracks on the schedule at Elkhart Lake with two shots at more top 10’s.

Rahal, has a top eight finish in all four tries at Road America. He’s also currently fifth in the season standings, 50 points out of the lead.

More: Big 3 The Ones To Beat This Weekend

What made Rahal’s finish in Indy so impressive is that he finally took home some hardware. See, Rahal has been a consistent top 10 driver, but he’s struggled to turn those top 10’s into podiums.

He’s scored 37 top 10 finishes since 2017. Among those are just six podiums, including this past weekend at Indianapolis. So, to finally get a top three finish, it’s something to build off of.

With two races at Road America, two at Iowa (7 top 10’s in his last 8 tries) then Mid-Ohio (6 straight top 10’s, 4 of which top 5’s) over the next five races, Rahal could very well be a legit championship contender this season. 

“Obviously I’m very excited to get to Road America after a strong run at Indianapolis Motor Speedway,” said Rahal. “I think that we proved out some great theories and improvements at IMS. I’m very proud of our engineering corps, and Takuma, Spencer and everyone that worked hard to get us where we are. I’m excited; I think we should be very strong.

“We’ll keep our focus on it and do the best that we can but we should be very good. We had a good race there last year and fought for a podium and I feel like we’re a little better off this year with how we came out of IMS. Not just the end result, but the performance in general, by all three cars was good so I feel good about it. I think we should be pretty strong.”

If Scott Dixon has a rare slip up, Rahal can close that gap quickly in the standings and make himself a true contender this year.