HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) – The worst moment of last season for Bobby Rahal – and one of the worst of his life – came hours before the start of the opening race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Rookie Paul Dana crashed into the nearly stopped car of Ed Carpenter, who had brought out a caution flag with a spin during the morning race warmup. Dana, preparing for his first race with RLR, was instantly killed by the impact. Carpenter escaped serious injury but sat out the race.

“That was a terrible, terrible time for everybody connected with the team,” Rahal said.

The former series champion and Indianapolis 500 winner, who co-owns the team with TV talk show host David Letterman, immediately withdrew the team’s other two drivers, Danica Patrick and Buddy Rice, from the race.

The rest of the season was a bleak blur of frustration for Rahal and RLR, which also spent about a third of the year without chief operating officer Scott Roembke, recuperating from a heart ailment. Roembke, despite his fancy title, Roembke is the person who has overseen the daily operation for Rahal and Letterman for years.

The problems continued on the track, too, as the team switched six races into the 14-race season from the Panoz chassis to Dallara. The Panoz cars were too slow, but moving to the faster Dallara chassis was also a problem since Rahal Letterman had to play catch-up all season with the teams that began 2006 with that chassis.

Rice, the 2004 Indy winner, had only two top-10 finishes and wound up 13th in the points.

Patrick, coming off a promising rookie year in which she sparked national “Danica-Mania” by qualifying and finishing fourth at Indy and running among the leaders all season, did improve from 12th to ninth in the points in 2006, but was unable to get close to her first IndyCar Series win.

“I can’t imagine what else could have gone wrong for our team in 2006,” Rahal said as his team prepared for Saturday night’s season-opening XM Satellite Radio Indy 300.

One thing he didn’t want to do was panic in the face of all that adversity.

“We had to remember we were only a season removed from being one of the dominate teams in IndyCar,” Rahal explained. “To make wholesale changes simply wasn’t the answer.

“I felt as though our people were simply stretched too thin by the three-car operation. I felt that we should get back to the basics and return to the two-car operation that had been so successful for us throughout our history.”

Roembke is now back full-time, the team has hired veteran engineer Jay O’Connell as its technical director, Rice and Patrick are gone – both signed with other IndyCar teams for 2007 – and optimism has returned.

Jeff Simmons, who stepped into Dana’s seat in the third race, was a bright spot for the team, showing steady improvement and finishing the year with all six of his top 10 finishes in the last seven races. He is back, joined by 39-year-old Scott Sharp, a nine-time winner in the series who is coming off a frustrating season of his own with Fernandez Racing.

Rahal is fired up about the team’s prospects for 2007.

“Scott (Sharp) has a wealth of experience and I have no doubt he will be an excellent leader for our team,” he said. “Jeff was forced into a difficult situation last season and, without the benefit of an offseason testing program, he was learning on the job. I was impressed with how Jeff showed improvement over the season and the strength of his last half of the season speaks for itself.”

Sharp, the 1996 co-champion of the IndyCar Series, has revived his enthusiasm since joining RLR.

“I’m super-hungry and I came to this team at a time when they are hungry, too,” Sharp said. “When I met with Bobby, he said, “I’m going to do whatever it takes.’ That sold me, and I’m impressed at what I’ve seen at the shop.

“It’s not going to happen overnight, but I’ve already seen good improvements over the last three weeks.”

AP-ES-03-23-07 1723EDT