From Track to Tech: The Shared Science of High Performance

We took a detour at our recent Accelerate Summit, and we’d do it again, and again and again.

Instead of another session on technology trends, we brought in someone who makes life-and-death decisions at 230 miles an hour for a living. Graham Rahal, six-time IndyCar race winner and 19-year series veteran, the driver of the i2c-sponsored No. 15 car and the commercial engine behind Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, joined us live from the Indianapolis 500 test track to talk about what high performance actually looks like when the stakes are real.

🎥 WATCH NOW: INDYCAR Star Graham Rahal Joins i2c at Accelerate Summit 2026

What we didn’t expect was how naturally the conversation mapped to high performance in payments—what we do every day.

Longevity Isn’t Luck. It’s Relationships.

Nineteen years as an IndyCar professional is almost unheard of in motorsport. More than 26 years as a leading payments technology platform is almost unheard of in fintech.

Neither happened by accident.

In IndyCar, without sponsors you simply don’t race. As Graham put it: if Miller Brewing Company didn’t sponsor the Dallas Cowboys, the Cowboys wouldn’t know the difference.

In racing, that relationship is structural and survival depends on it. Corporate partners aren’t just logos on a car. They’ve been long-term commitments that compound over time. Honda has been with Graham since his very first IndyCar race in 2008.

The same is true for us. The relationships we build with our clients, partners and vendors aren’t just commercial arrangements. They’re the foundation that makes sustained performance possible.

That’s not something you build in a quarter. It’s something you earn over years.

As we explored with American Banker, issuer processors have moved beyond infrastructure into genuine strategic partners, and that shift is built entirely on the depth of those relationships.

The other key to longevity: knowing when to come together.

Graham’s decision to merge with his father’s team in 2013 didn’t look obvious from the outside. He spent his entire early career building his own name and his own reputation. But ultimately, it was better to come together and build something bigger.

For us, that same logic drives every partnership decision we make: Sometimes the best move is collaboration over competition.

Speed Without Precision Is a Liability

Everyone in payments talks about speed. Faster settlement. Real-time money movement. Instant decisions. Speed matters enormously, ask anyone waiting on funds to arrive in their account or any institution racing a competitor to market with a new product.

But Graham was direct about what speed without precision actually means: if there are errors, delays, processing problems or wrong account numbers, that’s far more detrimental than spending an extra hour to make sure it’s done right.

At speeds of 230 mph, there’s no margin for error. We understand that same pressure. Payment infrastructure reliability at that level—processing billions of transactions across 216+ countries and territories with 99.999% uptime—isn’t just a technical specification. It’s the same commitment to precision that a race team makes every time it goes on track.

What high performance looks like in both worlds:

• Moving fast enough to compete
• Precise enough to avoid costly errors
• Consistent enough to be trusted at scale
• Adaptive enough to change approach as conditions shift. This point matters more than most people realize.

As Graham explained: the decisions you make at lap five of the Indianapolis 500 are completely different from the decisions you make when there’s a chance to win in the final laps. You must be prepared to change the course of action depending on where you are in the race.

In payments, the same principle applies.

The right move depends on where your institution is, what’s at stake and what your payments infrastructure can support in that moment. Emerging payment technologies are reshaping what customers expect, and the institutions that win are the ones whose infrastructure can keep pace without a rebuild every time the market moves.

Sometimes the most consistent operator wins over the fastest. The goal is to get to the finish line successfully, and that requires precision alongside speed, not instead of it.

Building for What’s Next, Not Just Right Now

Both of our organizations have built something that goes well beyond the day job. It’s not a side project or a PR stunt, but part of how we define our responsibility to the communities around us.

Graham’s foundation has raised millions for veterans — providing exoskeletons to paralyzed veterans at VA homes across the country, funding PTSD treatment through their Vino for Vets event and delivering VR technology that gives veterans new tools for recovery.

The foundation also funds the Losartan trial, a cancer research initiative working across four and five children’s hospitals to treat osteosarcoma, bone cancer in kids. Through comparative oncology, using data from cancer treatment in dogs whose cancer cells are nearly identical to humans under a microscope, the trial has seen children beat cancer.

That’s not a headline. That’s a mission.

For us, that mission translates to building payments infrastructure that performs as reliably for an underserved community as it does for a global enterprise. Showing up consistently and at scale, without cutting corners on the people who need it most.

The reasons a unified platform matters aren’t just technical. The last one is always about who gets served and how well.

No matter who the customer is or who they serve, organizations that last aren’t just built to win. They’re built to matter.

The Finish Line

Whether you’re navigating the final laps at Indianapolis or navigating a fast-moving payments landscape, the same principles hold.

• Build with precision.
• Lead with trust.
• Invest in the foundation.
• Stay hands-on.
• Give back.

And never build for right now when you can build for what’s next.

Ready to see what award-winning, banking and payments infrastructure looks like in practice? Let’s talk.

Performance Check: Key Questions Answered

What does IndyCar racing have to do with payments technology?

More than the metaphor suggests. Both industries demand speed with precision, not speed alone. Both reward consistency over individual brilliance. Both are built on long-term relationships that compound over time. And both require infrastructure that performs without fail when the stakes are highest.

What’s the difference between moving fast and moving with precision in payments?

Speed gets you to market. Precision keeps you there. Errors, delays and processing problems are far more detrimental than taking the time to do something right. The institutions gaining ground are the ones that move quickly and accurately, with infrastructure that doesn’t force a tradeoff between the two.

How do the best organizations build for longevity?

They invest in relationships before they need them. They know when to collaborate rather than compete. They build compliance and operational infrastructure before growth demands it. And they choose partners who will tell them when something isn’t working, not just tell them what they want to hear.

What does high performance in payments look like?

It looks like payment infrastructure reliability you can measure: 99.999% uptime. Real-time fraud detection at scale. Programs launched in weeks, not months. Authorization rates and fraud rates that both move in the right direction simultaneously. And a platform that grows with you rather than forcing you to rebuild every time the market shifts.