INDIANAPOLIS — The picture says it all. Graham Rahal happily kissing his youngest child. A few months ago, in this same spot, in fact, just a few yards from where he was smiling from ear to ear and basking in being the man of the hour on these hallowed grounds, Rahal had a different befuddlement of emotions.

On May 21, Rahal was bumped by a teammate as the final qualifier in May’s Indy 500. On August 11, Rahal, the final qualifier across the timing line in Friday’s Firestone Fast Six, bumped a teammate from the pole.

In a span of 82 days, Rahal experienced the lowest of lows to one of the highest of highs. With the same family watching on, Rahal delivered a lap of 1:10.1132-seconds taking him from fourth on the grid to the pole for Saturday’s Gallagher Grand Prix (2 p.m. ET, USA, INDYCAR Radio Network).

Talk about delivering in the biggest of moments. It’s not an Indy 500 win. It’s not even an NTT INDYCAR SERIES race win in general. But, for this second-generation driver who’s been through it all, this pole is something.

“Yeah, I mean, you move on from May as best you can,” Rahal said after earning his first pole since June 2017. “There’s a lot of frequent reminders what happened there, not only in qualifying, but the car not running at the start of the race, things like that.

Those are things that build character. I haven’t told many people this, but when I got back to my phone after May, after qualifying, the very first voice mail I had was from Al Unser Jr. Guys like that, you see somebody like him who’s been here, who’s won here, but he’s also seen the lows of the low. The best have went through it.

“I definitely seeing his name on my phone lifted my spirits a lot. You come back here, this is a totally different rodeo, but it still means a lot.”

Rahal doesn’t have a deal yet for 2024. He told me back in May that he doesn’t necessarily want to leave. The rest of this season would not only be a tryout for the team to him, but in the reverse too.

As we sit here today, nothing has changed on that front. It’s a work in progress. Nothing has signed. But the intentions remain.

“We’ve got an extremely, extremely good core group of sponsors, I think better than anybody else in the series. That’s growing for next year. There’s no intentions to swap,” he said. “I have talked to others, but that doesn’t mean that I’m one foot out the door.

“Everybody knows this: I wanted to not only evaluate where the team stands, but myself. I think it’s important to take a step back, look in the mirror, figure out where do I want to go, what do I want to do? Running qualifying on pole helps those decisions, for sure, knowing that you can still do it, knowing you can be up front. A win tomorrow would make it even sweeter.

“At the end of the day I think a lot of people just assume I’m going to retire at some stage soon. I mean, I’m only 34. I know I’ve been here for a hundred years, but I still feel like I’ve got a little while left.

“Also the reality is that these young guys are really, really good now. You’ve seen it in Cup, too, right? These kids that are coming in are ultra prepared, way more prepared than I was the first time I drove an INDYCAR, anything like that. So the competitive nature continues to rise.

“Clearly this weekend is very different than the 500, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t carry a lot of significance and importance to our team and to me personally. I’ve seen plenty of the hate, plenty of the can’t do it, can’t compete with the kids, can’t whatever.

“To be able to silence some of that, and I thought we did a bit at Mid-Ohio, but it’s nice to see a good step forward finally in the car the way I want it to drive. It’s starting to come together.

“It’s nice to have a reminder that you belong, for sure.”

Belong he does. It’s just another example on how this place, this lore, you can’t script it. From Penske winning the 1994 Indy 500 to missing out on the race completely a year later. To Rahal’s dad, Bobby Rahal, the reigning PPG Cart champion bumped out in 1993 to his own son being bumped out 30 years later. To James Hinchcliffe nearly dying in 2015 in a Turn 3 practice crash to winning the pole a year later in dramatic fashion for the 100th Running of the big event.

Indy always delivers.

“These things happen around here, which is a little bit abnormal,” Rahal said. “A little different from the oval to the road course.

“I don’t know what it is about Indy, but we all talk about it as a living being, that it kind of writes its own story. I say it every year: in this large book that’s gone on a hundred-plus years now, a lot of people have had the chance to have their chapter. Some people like Helio have several in the book. You just hope it’s your time.

“The mystique of Indy and the things that happen and all of that are alive and well. I think Indy is very different.”