2015 Fontana Revisited: 80 Lead Changes and the Race IndyCar Never Ran Again
Happy Hour Racing's Monday IndyCar Recap. The 2026 season is over and the 2027 opener is still months away, so this week we go back to the wildest 500-mile race the series has run outside Indianapolis.
The Short Version
On June 27, 2015, Graham Rahal won the MAVTV 500 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, by 0.3157 seconds over Tony Kanaan. The race produced 80 lead changes among 14 drivers, still the most in the history of American open-wheel racing. It was Rahal's first win in 125 races. It was also the last IndyCar race ever held at that track, and most of the drivers who ran it spent the evening saying it should never happen again.
Four Lanes Wide at 215 MPH
Fontana is a two-mile oval with wide, sweeping corners, and the 2015 aero package turned it into a drafting track. Cars ran side by side and three deep for most of 250 laps. The lead changed hands 80 times among 14 drivers, breaking the previous IndyCar record of 73, which had also been set at Fontana back in 2001.
The first caution did not come out until lap 136. Everything before that was pack running above 215 mph with no margin and no room. Fans at home saw one of the best races of the decade. Most of the drivers saw something else.
Rahal's Day, Fuel Hose and All
Rahal started 19th. He was not the fastest car on the day and he did not lead the most laps. What he did was stay out of trouble in a race where almost nobody could.
His one real mistake came on a pit stop in the final third of the race, when he pulled out of his box while the car was still being fueled. The nozzle separated from the hose and Rahal carried the hardware out onto the racetrack. Race control did not penalize him during the race. IndyCar later fined his team 10,000 dollars for leaving the pits with equipment attached, with half of that suspended, and put one crew member on probation for three races.
He kept his nose clean after that and took the lead in the closing laps. Kanaan chased him down and was right there on the final restart, but the gap at the line read 0.3157 seconds, with Marco Andretti third another second back.
The Last Two Laps
With nine laps left, Takuma Sato got loose between Will Power and Scott Dixon and put both of them into the outside wall. That brought out a red flag and set up a three-lap sprint with six cars covered by almost nothing: Rahal, Kanaan, Andretti, Juan Pablo Montoya, Ryan Briscoe and Ryan Hunter-Reay.
On the last lap, Briscoe and Hunter-Reay touched. Briscoe's car got airborne, came down hard and scattered debris across the start-finish line. Both drivers climbed out under their own power. Rahal completed the final lap under caution and won.
Power was furious after his crash and shoved a safety worker on the way out of the car. IndyCar fined him 25,000 dollars and placed him on probation.
The Drivers Hated It
The quotes afterward were not the kind a series wants after its best television product of the year. Power compared it to Las Vegas, the 2011 race where Dan Wheldon was killed, and asked what the series thought it was doing. Montoya said plainly that he felt the racing was too stupid and that he had told IndyCar so the day before. Kanaan said it was great for the fans, but that drivers do not get in the car to find out what 215 mph feels like three-wide.
Rahal was one of the few who defended it. He pointed out that there were four usable lanes and that the tires fell off enough to make the racing real rather than purely aerodynamic. Both sides had a point, and the argument over pack racing on big ovals has never fully been settled since.
Why There Was Never Another One
The driver reaction was only part of it. The 2015 race was scheduled as a Saturday afternoon event in late June, in a part of California where late June afternoons are brutal. Fewer than 10,000 people showed up in a facility built for many times that. The track president said publicly that the date had to move to September or later. Two months after the race, IndyCar confirmed Fontana would not be on the 2016 calendar.
It never came back. That was the fourteenth and final IndyCar race at Auto Club Speedway. The track held its last NASCAR Cup race in 2023 and has since been largely torn down, with most of the land sold off for industrial development and a planned half-mile short track still unbuilt. IndyCar has not run an oval in California since that afternoon.
Where It Left Graham Rahal
The Fontana win changed Rahal's 2015. He added a second victory that year at Mid-Ohio, ran a four-race stretch of top-four finishes, and led the championship conversation into the fall before a late hit from Sebastien Bourdais in the Sonoma finale dropped him to fourth in the standings, which is still his career-best season.
He has six career IndyCar wins. Two of them came in 2015. His most recent one came at Detroit on June 4, 2017, which means the driver who famously ended a 125-race drought at Fontana is now carrying a longer one. He is still on the grid, now with more than 300 starts across 18 seasons, and he finished 16th in the 2026 standings on 302 points.
WHAT A RACE BY GRAHAM RAHAL
- Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (@RLLracing) May 31, 2026
What It Means for 2027
IndyCar's oval calendar is thinner now than it was in 2015. The 2027 schedule carries 17 races with five oval dates across four tracks: Phoenix on March 13, the 111th Indianapolis 500 on May 30, World Wide Technology Raceway on June 13, and a Milwaukee Mile doubleheader on August 28 and 29. There is no 500-mile race on the calendar other than Indianapolis, and no West Coast oval at all. You can see the full calendar on the IndyCar Series schedule and standings page.
IndyCar to return to Phoenix Raceway for NASCAR doubleheader in 2027
- IndyStarSports (@IndyStarSports) August 5, 2026
The Bottom Line
The 2015 MAVTV 500 is the best argument for and against pack racing in the same two and a half hours. It gave IndyCar its all-time lead-change record and one of the most watchable races of the decade, and it scared enough of the paddock that the series has not tried anything like it on a two-mile oval since. Eleven years on, both the race and the racetrack are gone.
Shop IndyCar gear at Happy Hour Racing
We do not carry Graham Rahal gear right now, so here is what is in stock from our IndyCar collection:
- IndyCar Checkered Flag Sublimated Race Tee
- Checkered Flag Sports Indy 500 Snake Pit Tee
- Checkered Flag Sports Indy 500 Back Home Again Tee
- Checkered Flag Sports Indy 500 Champions Tee
- Colton Herta No. 26 Gainbridge Andretti 1:18 Diecast
Your turn: was Fontana 2015 the best IndyCar race of the last twenty years, or was Montoya right that the series should never have been running like that? Tell us where you land.
