'Glad to be back'

INDIANAPOLIS -- The billboard across the street from the speedway looks like a greeting for a long-lost friend: "Look who's back in town."\nThen you see the photo of team owner Bobby Rahal and driver Jimmy Vasser.\nTo Rahal, the 1986 Indianapolis 500 champion, there could be no simpler message: If it's May, he belongs at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.\n"It was disappointing not to be here," Rahal said after arriving at the track this week. "We had some races in May, so it wasn't like we were sitting around doing nothing. Certainly, though, I think we should have been here."\nRahal insists he always believed that, even when his CART team left Indianapolis after the Indy Racing League formed in 1996.\nRahal was one of Tony George's most vehement critics after George's decision to split open-wheel racing into two circuits, CART and the IRL.\nTime is healing the wounds.\nRahal is the most recent addition to a growing list of CART teams that have returned to Indianapolis.\nChip Ganassi broke the ice in 2000 when he won the race with Juan Pablo Montoya. Last year Team Green and Roger Penske returned, with Penske driver Helio Castroneves winning. This year, seven CART drivers will try to make the May 26 race.\nAnd after a six-year absence, Rahal has gotten enough money from his primary sponsor, Miller Brewing Company, to put his first car as a full-time owner on the Indianapolis track.\n"There's an excitement, a certain challenge about being back," Rahal said. "It's certainly changed around here from the last time I drove here."\nHis final race here came in 1995 and his third-place finish was the last in a string of successes. He had seven top 10 finishes in 13 Indy starts, including the '86 victory, a runner-up finish in 1990 and another third-place finish in 1994.\nDespite the complaints about the split, his passion for the sport and the race have not faded.\n"He does talk about Indianapolis a lot," Vasser said. "He regards Indianapolis as one of his crowning achievements."\nWhile his return to the track has been embraced by some fans, Rahal said he does not expect to receive everyone's blessings.\nBut he said he is happy to be back, competing on the track that turned him into a racing celebrity -- and got his photo on a billboard.\n"It pained me greatly to watch this race on television, from afar," he said. "I'm glad to be back at the track, but you still have to ask yourself what was accomplished over the last six years"