Franchitti’s comeback made complete by IRL title

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Dario Franchitti’s path to another IndyCar series championship might have started when he broke his left ankle in a Nationwide Series crash last year at Talladega.

Or when his NASCAR team was shut down.

Or during an unplanned business dinner in Detroit.

Or maybe even on Wall Street, when the financial markets tanked.

Really, all those events helped shape what happened at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Saturday night, when Franchitti reclaimed his place as the IRL champion by winning the season-ending Indy 300, the first caution-free and second-fastest race in series history. It was Franchitti’s second championship, and unlike after the first crown in 2007, he isn’t abandoning open-wheel racing for NASCAR this time.

“It hasn’t really sunk in yet,” Franchitti said. “In ‘07 there was a lot of satisfaction in getting that one done. And now to come back from where we were a year ago, I think that’s what makes it sweeter.”

Where he was a year ago might as well have been nowhere.

The lure of NASCAR was too much for Franchitti to ignore after his 2007 title, so he left IRL on top and slid over to stock cars, with the backing of owner Chip Ganassi. The star power was overwhelming: Franchitti is a huge draw, his wife is the super-popular actress Ashley Judd, and Ganassi’s name is synonymous with racing success.

It just didn’t work.

Franchitti struggled, then got hurt in a crash at Talladega. The global economic downturn picked up steam, defeating any hope Ganassi had of finding a title sponsor for Franchitti’s team. The results were bleak, the outlook was bleaker, and Ganassi eventually had to call Franchitti to say the team was being shut down, costing 71 employees jobs.

“A lot of people lost their jobs at a bad time,” Franchitti said. “I wondered what was going to happen.”

His fortunes turned two months later.

Dan Wheldon said he was leaving Ganassi, a move that apparently caught many off-guard. That announcement came around the same time Franchitti was in Detroit watching his brother race, and there he crossed paths with Mike Hull, Ganassi’s managing director.

A dinner was arranged.

A contract was hastily agreed to on a cocktail napkin.

A year later, a championship was won. At the IRL championship celebration Sunday, Franchitti received his spoils: A $1 million bonus check, along with a watch and other prizes worth another $117,000.

“I can’t really say I was thinking about winning a championship,” Ganassi said. “I thought, ‘Well, it would be great if we could win the championship with him.’ But we knew that if he was going to win a championship, he had another guy that was in a pretty good car that he was going to have to beat. We knew that guy pretty well, too.”

That guy was Scott Dixon, Franchitti’s teammate, who would have won the IRL title — it would have been his second straight and third overall — by winning at Homestead on Saturday. But both he and Ryan Briscoe, the other remaining championship contender, needed to make late stops for fuel, handing the lead back to Franchitti.

Dixon and Briscoe were more than 20 seconds ahead of Franchitti. When they pitted and he didn’t, though, they were doomed.

Moments later, Franchitti’s comeback season wrapped up with a title. Had a caution flag come out at any point Saturday, the story could have had a decidedly different ending.

“Dario had gone for the ultimate strategy to try and save fuel and stay on the lead lap,” Dixon said. “I think at that point he was the only other car on the lead lap. You’ve got to give them credit, man. They put it out there, they tried it. It’s fantastic for the team. Job well done by those folks over here.”

Franchitti finished with 616 points, 11 more than Dixon, 12 more than Briscoe. They were the absolute cream of the IRL crop: Helio Castroneves, with 433 points, finished the year fourth overall.

“Congratulations to Dario,” driver Ed Carpenter said. “He outlasted those other guys and got it done.”

Over that unplanned dinner last Labor Day weekend in Detroit, by Franchitti’s recollection, Ganassi wanted to hear him respond to two questions:

“Why do I want to come back to IndyCar?”

“Was I up for the challenge and ready to do it again and give 100 percent?”

The answers are obvious now.

“I’m just glad they invited me back to come and play,” Franchitti said. “I really enjoyed it. I wanted to be part of the unified series, the places we get to race at and the people I get to race against and the cars I get to drive. It’s pretty cool.”