INDIANAPOLIS – Graham Rahal said Monday afternoon that, for whatever reason, he “wasn’t meant to be” in this month’s Indianapolis 500.

“I’m a firm believer that everything in life happens for a reason, and the 2023 Indy 500 was not in my cards.”

And yet, when the green flag flies Sunday afternoon, he’ll be strapped into the cockpit of a Dallara chassis among the field of 33.

Because following Stefan Wilson's crash in Monday’s practice after he was ran into from behind by Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Katherine Legge in Turn 1 of the IMS oval and left with a fractured thoracic vertebrae that has sidelined him for Sunday’s 500, Dennis Reinbold, the owner of Wilson’s No. 24 Chevy entry, made Rahal his first phone call.

“Right away, I felt compelled that this was, for some reason, my calling to be here, to be able to help as best I could and to fill in,” Rahal said Tuesday. “Clearly, this is Stef’s ride. It’s his seat. He’s done a great job to get it to the point that it is. It was an honor for me to receive the call, and I certainly am very grateful.”

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In some ways, though, heaven and earth had to move to make such a union possible. What those on the outside thought an impossible union, DRR, RLL, Honda, Chevy, Graham and all sides’ sponsors hashed out in a matter of hours before midnight Monday.

“(It’s amazing how) in a situation like this, the IndyCar community rallies around each other with all the help we got from everyone in the paddock and elsewhere,” Reinbold said. “It just goes all the way through the paddock, and it’s really a touching feeling that so many competitors can come together and work together.

“There’s just so many conflicts and things that we had to work through to put this together, but it’s the Indy 500, and people come together to make this event and make it great like it is.”

Here’s some insight into how the deal came together, answers to some major questions and the road all the parties involve face in the coming days ahead of Sunday’s race:

What got the ball rolling for to land Rahal in Wilson's seat?

Wilson’s crash, where he spun counter-clockwise and nailed the Turn 1 outer SAFER barrier nose-first and destroyed the tub, requiring a move to a backup car no matter who would be driving it, took place at 2:11 p.m. IndyCar medical director Dr. Julia Vaizer told reporters at 2:50 p.m. that Wilson was enroute to IU Methodist Hospital in downtown Indianapolis for additional imaging and evaluation.

He had been fitted with a neck brace by the AMR safety team before he was extracted from the car, put onto a stretcher and wheeled into an ambulance. Wilson would stay at Methodist overnight for more tests and observation – news that was announced at 7:45 p.m.

By 10:30 p.m., Rahal said, all parties involved had the makings of a deal – a remarkable turnaround that involved rival manufacturers, as well as sponsors that had signed on to be on Rahal’s No. 15 Honda. With the prospect he could be back in the race but driving with a new team that had a primary sponsor – CareKeepers – some massaging needed to be done behind the scenes.

Perhaps one of the keys to the situation was that Rahal’s new DRR teammate, Ryan Hunter-Reay, has been running without a primary sponsor on his sidepods. Tuesday’s release from DRR already has stated that Fifth Third Bank and United Rentals, Rahal’s two major sponsors on his No. 15 Honda, will shift onto his new ride. It also seems likely that some combination of those two, plus CareKeepers and perhaps other typical RLL sponsors, could help fill the remaining vacant space on Hunter-Reay’s sidepods.

“Yesterday afternoon, Bobby immediately came over and spoke to me, and we put our heads down to try and figure out how we could make this happen – if we could,” Reinbold said. “Bobby stepped in and really make it work out to where we could do different things and shift things around. Our car will look a bit different to accommodate some of those things in order for us all to work together, and just get to the end goal.

“This was a dire situation for us, and Graham had his situation Sunday. We’re trying to turn this into a win-win situation, and hopefully win-win-win after Sunday. We just rolled up our sleeves and went to work. We’ve got some other announcements coming with Ryan’s car as well. Both cars will look slightly different and tweaked. Working on it still.”

No other information regarding the finer details of the contract – namely, how much money may have changed hands, where it might have come from and in which direction it went – was not disclosed.

How did Honda come to terms to 'okay' Rahal driving a Chevy?

Money, though, can only get you so far, when it comes to racing. Sometimes, manufacturer ties and battles can run even deeper.

And that’s precisely why suggestions that recent DRR drivers JR Hildebrand or Sage Karam, or a constant paddock presence like Charlie Kimball, seemed like simpler quick-fixes, even if they hadn’t been in the car this past week (and the entire 2023 season leading into May) and would have to go through a refresher test later this week to get clearance to practice and race.

Hildebrand, for his part, had made a point to get his physical done earlier this month when he was at IMS on the outside chance of a driver switch.

Rahal, for one, thought the Honda-Chevy hurdle would be too much to overcome.

“I think I told Dennis when he called me, ‘I’m not really sure I want to waste your time.’ I’ve spent my entire career with Honda. I’ve never driven anything other than that, so I’m not really sure we’ll be able to get the releases in place to be able to make this happen’,” Rahal retold Tuesday. “I knew the hurdles were going to be massive. And then, last night, we were sitting there at about 10:30 p.m., going, ‘I can’t believe this actually happened.'”

For their part in giving the green light to Rahal’s stand-in for Wilson, American Honda Motor Co. PR manager Chuck Schifsky explained to IndyStar that its contracts are specifically with RLL – both for an engine deal and for marketing rights – meaning Rahal himself wasn’t truly constrained, contractually, to a Honda-powered Indy car. Still, a high-profile project such as this needed some sort of ‘blessing’ to keep building momentum.

As Schifsky said, that thumbs up came in a matter of minutes after a call from the elder Rahal.

“We agreed that, in the theme of being good sports, we wanted to allow Graham to do it, and in the idea of putting forward the best Indy 500, as a pretty large member of the IndyCar community, we felt it was our responsibility to do both of those things,” he said. “It was pretty simple. We thought about it for a minute, and there’s some emotional things that come in, with Graham and his family being a large part of the Indy 500 and the IndyCar series for so many years."

Reinbold took the lead on the Chevy side of the equation, after those separate consultations “and a couple hurdles later, it started looking good. We kept crossing things off our checklist, and that made this a possibility.”

Did Rahal have concerns competing against RLL?

One of his trepidations, Rahal, said to agreeing to this deal with DRR was the idea that, hours before, he’d made staunch public commitments to helping RLL fix as many of its glaring performance issues as possible before Sunday’s race. He’d have a unique perspective as a driver who just days prior was physically feeling all the sensations Harvey, Legge and Christian Lundgaard were, while now having time to work more closely with new technical director Stefano Sordo and the rest of the engineering team to formulate a plan of quick fixes to try and move up the grid Sunday.

And then, he was presented with an opportunity to keep his streak of consecutive 500 starts, dating back to 2008, alive. In a way, Rahal said, it was an honor, a bit of a surprise and a boost in confidence that he received the call to begin with. He now has something he can prove, having broken free from the confines of his family’s shop after mentioning last week the possibility he could retire at the end of the year or seek out a more competitive ride elsewhere.

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“I wouldn’t come here if I didn’t think we had a chance to win and go forward,” Rahal said of his temporary team. “I think these guys will tell you, they’ve had a very strong car all week, and (Hunter-Reay) is going to be a great partner. I wish my team at RLL the best for sure. I certainly want to see them succeed, but I also wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t want to go win with this entire organization.

“On a personal level, I felt (getting the call) gave me a boost, personally, because I’ve driven for my dad for so long. You always wonder what everybody else thinks of you, so it was a blessing, but there was part of me that thought with where (RLL) is as a team, ‘Can I have move of an impact trying to help them perform better this weekend?’"

Why Rahal's relationship with Wilson's brother sealed the deal

Even after all that, though, it’s no guarantee the younger Rahal would’ve given this offer much thought if it hadn’t been for his relationship with the late Justin Wilson, who served as Rahal’s teammate during their 2008 IndyCar season with what was then Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing and who quickly became an older brother figure of sorts for the then-teenage Rahal.

“I think about Justin a lot,” Rahal said of the British driver who died from injuries sustained in a crash during an IndyCar race at Pocono in August 2015. “When the call came, right away there was an immediate connection.”

As Rahal went on to describe, Justin Wilson “helped shape” the early course of his career, dating back to 2006 when the younger driver had aspirations of making it to F1, where Wilson had raced in 2003. “Justin Wilson was the guy who told me that it was way too political, and I didn’t have the right filter to enter Formula 1,” Rahal said. “If it were not for him, I probably would have kept chasing a different dream.

“I have the utmost respect for their entire family, and in a scenario like this, had it been something different, I don’t know how compelled I would’ve been, particularly with the storylines of the last couple days. For me, it was a little bit of a bittersweet moment. Do I do it? Do I not? Is it appropriate? Is it not? But in these circumstances, it just felt right.”

What's next for Rahal, DRR ahead of Carb Day?

According to IndyCar’s rulebook, because of a driver change that’s been made after qualifying, Rahal will start Sunday’s race at the back of the field on the outside of Row 11 (in the 33^rd spot). Cars originally positioned 26^th-33^rd (Wilson originally qualified 25th) will all shift up one spot, with some changing rows. Ironically, it’ll mean Rahal will be up close and personal to his former/future teammates for the green flag and the race’s opening laps.

Fellow full-time RLL driver Jack Harvey bumped Rahal from Sunday’s race with a miraculous run during the Last Chance Qualifier as time expired. “Jack hasn’t gotten rid of me yet,” Rahal said with a grin.

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By 3 p.m. Monday afternoon, DRR was already in the early throws of converting its backup car it has had for two years – which has never been on the Speedway and which at the time had a go-kart motor in it to serve its purpose as a pitstop practice car – into Rahal’s machine he’ll get a feel for in Friday’s two-hour Carb Day practice.

Not only will it be a new car, but it comes with a new steering wheel with a new layout of buttons, a seat he’ll be fitted for Tuesday and a variety of new technical parts, pieces, formats, etc. he’ll have to learn. His good friend Hunter-Reay will now spend the next three days as a last-minute teacher for the driver who’s never manned Chevy power in his nearly two decades in the sport.

“I literally haven’t changed my steering wheel in 12 years. I still run the same base I’ve run since the Newman/Haas days, when I took it from there to Ganassi to RLL,” Rahal said. “And Hunter-Reay already texted me and say, ‘Hey, make sure later we talk about the ‘yellow map’ and this and that, because it’s all different.' I’ve been so programmed and tuned into the Honda side for so long that this is going to be a unique scenario."

“The steering wheel is not one you can switch easy because the programming and the wiring and everything is pretty specific to the team, so we’ll sit in there and study as best we can, probably take a photo so that I can go home and look at the wheel to get the buttons memorized. But this is what you’ve trained to do for years and years, and you’ve got to be able to jump in and do it.”

What do we know about Wilson's health?

Reinbold and Don Cusick (owner of Cusick Motorsports, the program that aligned with DRR to help make Wilson’s entry this year a reality) didn’t have any firm updates on Wilson’s health, though what they did say sounds promising. Before the 10 a.m. press conference, Cusick said he’d spoken with his driver, and he went back in the afternoon as the team waiting on additional test results that will determine whether he requires surgery or not in the coming days.

There could be a chance, though, Wilson may still be on-hand for Sunday’s race.

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“He really appreciates all the outpouring and concern, and hopefully we get him back here on Sunday and walk down the track with him.”

Wilson provided his own update on Twitter, saying a video that he was “doing well, all things considered” and that his focus was already on the 2024 Indy 500 “so I can try to get back here to this race. It means so much to me, and the journey to 2024 starts now.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indy 500: How Graham Rahal replaced Stefan Wilson, what comes next