Graham Rahal has not ruled out a return to Ganassi in the future, although he remains convinced that moving on was the best option at this point in his career.
Rahal split with Ganassi at the end of last year to join Rahal Letterman Lanigan after two largely frustrating seasons that yielded just four podiums, and left him with a best championship finish of ninth in 2011. Despite the disappointments, Rahal says that there were plenty of positives to take from his stint in the Ganassi line-up.
"I think the Ganassi thing will be good for me moving on forward in my career," he said. "Who knows, I would love to be in IndyCar racing for many years to come, and maybe one of these days will end up back there. But I'm not going to sit there and tell you it was a complete failure. We just maybe didn't have all the wins and successes that we hoped for."
Rahal's only career win so far came with Newman/Haas in his debut at St. Petersburg in 2008. His best opportunity to add a second victory came at Texas last year, where he hit the wall while leading with two laps to go and was passed by eventual winner Justin Wilson.
While admitting that the Texas mistake still haunts him, Rahal does not consider it to be a factor in his departure from Ganassi.
"It's kind of a long story, but the writing was on the wall pretty early in the year," he said. "It seemed like it just wasn't going to ... and it wasn't my choice necessarily ... I'm just saying that the writing was on the wall that it didn't seem promising.
"I really enjoyed my time there. I really got to work with some great people. And Texas was great fun for me.
"For an oval, I've never driven so hard in my life on a road course, let alone an oval. I was hanging on to that thing and was just lucky enough to have a chance to win it.
"And, of course, I wish that we would have. It would have been nice to get [win] no. 2 and get that off my back, because now, until I get that chance again, I'll never stop hearing that question about Texas."