Graham Rahalarrived at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth on Thursday and began talking about how much he now loves oval tracks.

My, how times have changed.

This is the same driver who a year ago was skittish about turning his first laps on such tracks. He crashed during his first test at Homestead-Miami Speedway and missed the season-opening race because his new IndyCar Series team couldn’t rebuild the car quickly enough.

The son of 1986 Indianapolis 500 winnerBobby Rahallabored through the season with an average finish of 18.1 on ovals, with a last-place finish at Indy, 25ths at Milwaukee and Kentucky, and general difficulties at several other such tracks. His best finish was 10th at Iowa, an event with five accidents.

This year, Rahal, 20, is a threat to win everywhere. Street circuits. Short ovals. Indy. Even Texas.

He won the pole and finished seventh at Kansas in April, qualified fourth for the 500 and ran well before crashing, and started on the front row at Milwaukee before finishing fourth.

He called it “a fresh outlook.”

“The ovals are something I’m really starting to enjoy,” the Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing driver said before Thursday night’s initial practice at Texas. “Milwaukee (last week) was one of my favorite races ever because we were always racing somebody. That’s what makes it exciting.”

Earlier this week, Rahal had his regular postrace assessment withScott Roembke, who has led Rahal Letterman Racing for 17 years.

Roembke’s list of Rahal’s positives in the Milwaukee race far exceeded the negatives, which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering Rahal had one of the best drives of his career.

Roembke and Rahal called it his smartest race, and Dario Franchitti said Rahal is “using his head” more effectively.

“It absolutely was the smartest race I’ve done, and I’ll carry that over to this,” Rahal said of Saturday night’s race in Texas. "I’ll take that same approach to Indianapolis next year.

“I think it taught me a lot of lessons that I will carry with me for the rest of my career.”

Carl Long, whose small Sprint Cup team lost its appeal this week for using an illegal engine at the Memorial Day weekend race in Charlotte, said this generation of NASCAR officials doesn’t have the sport’s best interest at heart.

Long said NASCAR founderBill Francewould not have penalized a struggling team like his $200,000 (plus 200 points).

“These guys don’t care,” he told reporters. “They don’t have any heart.”

Goodyear officials said several of the nine drivers participating in this week’s Sprint Cup test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway completed fuel runs on a set of tires, something that wasn’t possible in last year’s Allstate 400 at the Brickyard due to excessive tire wear. . . .Tony Stewart‘s “Prelude to a Dream,” the late model all-star race rained out this week at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, has been rescheduled for Sept. 9. Stewart leads the Sprint Cup Series for the first time since 2005. Before this year, he had led the standings in only two seasons, and he won the title in each. . . . NASCAR has moved to double-file restarts beginning with this weekend’s race at Pocono Raceway. The first- and second-place drivers will line up side by side as the green flag drops for each restart. The former restart procedure had lap-down cars on the inside, and the lead-lap cars on the outside.

Call Star reporter Curt Cavin at (317) 444-6409 or e-mail curt.cavin@indystar.com.