The Scot has returned to open-wheel racing after taking a shot at NASCAR following the 2007 season, when he won the Indianapolis 500 and IndyCar Series championship.
The stock car adventure ended abruptly last July when team owner Chip Ganassi closed Franchitti’s team for lack of sponsorship, with few prospects of finding any backing in the bleak economy.
Tuesday, during a break on the opening day of pre-season testing at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Dario Franchitti said he has mixed feelings about his short stay in NASCAR.
“I’m disappointed because I’ve been lucky enough to win in everything I’ve ever done,” he said. “So the fact I didn’t win, or (have) what I consider success, kind of grates a little bit. I’m very happy to be where I am right now, with this opportunity. But I’d like to have been successful in that area.”
But Franchitti doesn’t consider his time in NASCAR a failure.
“I was getting the hang of it by the end of it,” he said. “Certainly, the last three races in the Cup car I was starting to run as good if not better than my teammates. And, in the Nationwide car, we qualified on the pole at the road course (at Watkins Glen) and on the front row at Bristol and led 80-something laps there.
“So I was getting the hang of it, but it just wasn’t to be. The economy and stuff, all those things, it just wasn’t to be.”
But Ganassi, whose IndyCar team won the Indy 500 and the championship last year with Scott Dixon, needed a replacement for Dan Wheldon, who left to join Panther Racing.
Franchitti was the obvious choice.
“When there was a possibility of an opening on our IndyCar team, the only person I thought about was Dario,” Ganassi said when he made the announcement last September. “This is going to be a great move for Dario and for our team.”
Franchitti is pretty happy, too.
“How lucky am I that I got to go away and do (NASCAR) for a year, come back here and jump into the best drive in the paddock?” he said. “Believe me, I’m well aware of how lucky I am.”
“I think he’s going to fare extremely well,” Dixon said. “I think he’s more motivated, basically because he had a bit of a bad year and I think he wants to right a few wrongs. I think he’s going to be, at least from my standpoint, my toughest competition for the whole season.”
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