His qualifying average of 221.1mph fell shy of Scott Goodyear’s 221.8mph run to earn the last spot on the grid. After turning 367 laps searching for fractions of a second, a shocking outcome was visited upon the Rahal-Hogan team.

“I’ll never forget before qualifying [team principal] Scott Roembke, who was never prone to sugarcoat anything, said to me, ‘I don’t think we’re going to be able to qualify,’” Rahal recalled. “And I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. What are you talking about?’ I said, ‘Well, there’s no way.’ Well, it became pretty clear that we had a problem. And we did everything we could and it wasn’t enough.”

With heavy investment from Miller Beer and other well-known sponsors for the season, the concept of watching from the sidelines at the sport’s biggest race was never considered.

“It was a very emotional … I remember in our suite, of course, I had a suite then, and we had all of our sponsors up there, and I’m up there with them and they got very emotional,” Rahal admitted. “I’m watching the pace lap thinking, hey, I’m, I’m supposed to be out there, not up here where I am. And that really, that really taught me a lesson.”

Rahal would soon find his calamitous qualifying came with a silver lining.

“Lots of good things came from that experience,” he said. “I mean, here you won the championship in ‘92, and now you don’t qualify in ’93 for the 500, Miller was my sponsor, [and] the idea that you don’t make the Indy 500? I mean, that was the race that had the most importance and still does, and then to not be there…

“I have to say that the head of marketing for Miller at the time was a guy named Dick Strup, and he was amazing. [He] took me on essentially a three-year deal, and so we were in the second year, and when we went home with our tail between our legs, then the next day, a three-year extension came in the mail. Talk about the ultimate sign of faith.”

Another positive would follow Miller’s extension when the team made a pricey investment in new Lolas. Rahal-Hogan’s fortunes improved immediately.

“Of course, after the 500, we bought a couple Lolas and I’m finishing fourth in Milwaukee the next race and ended up having not a bad year, but it really taught me and maybe others – Tim Cindric he was there then – a lot of lessons about overconfidence,” Rahal said. “Hubris is another term for it. So, you know, we felt after ‘92 we could do anything, and it was clear that you couldn’t do everything.”

For 1994, Rahal-Hogan would enter into a new partnership with Honda as the Japanese brand entered the CART IndyCar Series. Using new Lolas, Rahal had removed any chassis concerns at the Speedway, but his new issue was found in the engine bay. High weight and low power would send Rahal and teammate Mike Groff into panic mode as, for the second consecutive year, qualifying for the race was in jeopardy.

“To add onto that story, so in ‘94, we show up with the Hondas, and we don’t have the pace, but with Lolas, you know, so we had the same cars as everybody else, but we didn’t have the pace to qualify,” he said.

“What happened in ‘93 is really what spurred us on to have to lease two Penskes [chassis] from Roger, and obviously, which did not go well – down well with Honda, uh, because we had to withdraw those cars in order to qualify the Penske cars, but I couldn’t go to Miller and say, sorry, we’re not going to make the Indy 500 two years in a row, you know? They didn’t care what motor I had in that car or what chassis I had. All they cared about was being in the race, so the ‘93 experience really spurred things in ’94.”

Rahal in a Penske car, 1994 (Image by Pruett)

With the wisdom of 25 years to reflect on missing the 1993 race, Rahal wonders if it the outcome was a sign from above.

“It was a very traumatic time for us,” he said. “For me particularly, to miss the race, I have to say, I think maybe that was God’s way of keeping me out of the race ‘cause I’m not sure the car was … it was pretty fragile.”

In the aftermath of missing the 500, Rahal received a note from his hero who was also known for pushing boundaries with unique cars.

“I’ll never forget after that, I got a note from Dan Gurney who was always accused of messing around too much,” he said. “I got a note from him that basically said, hey, don’t look back. You tried. He had done the same, and sometimes it works. Sometimes it didn’t, and so at least I took some solace in that.”

After destroying the field in 1994 with his Ilmor-Mercedes Penske PC23s, the Captain would know Rahal’s pain in 1995 when his cars weren’t quick enough to make the show. Just as Penske made cars available for Rahal in 1994, Rahal made his backups available for Penske, but the defending Indy 500 winners missed the cut.

“I took real solace in it when Roger’s team didn’t qualify two years later in our cars, which had qualified, you know?” he said. “So, the same cars … I guess nobody’s too big to fail. Let’s put it that way. They’re not always happy endings, you know?”