IndyCar – Dario Franchitti looks back on his “painful” season

Dario Franchitti had a difficult 2012 season. The Scotsman of Italian origin only finished seventh in the Drivers' championship. A hard blow to swallow for the one who won the title four times during his four previous participations, in 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011, the driver having left to try his luck in Nascar in 2008, without much success. “A good part of the season was trying,” he admits. Dario Franchitti particularly had difficulty adapting to the new Dallara DW12 chassis. “The beginning was even painful, it took us time for the car to do what we expected of it, and time for me to understand how I should drive it. » Following a series of poor performances at the start of the year, his hopes of fighting for the title quickly disappeared. “It happens in racing. There are ups and downs, " declares Paul di Resta’s cousin. “The good news is that the pace was there. We had one of our best qualifying averages in years?, the driver notably signing four pole positions in a row, from Milwaukee to Edmonton.

But despite this complicated start to the season, Dario Franchitti would still win a race, the most beautiful in this championship: the Indianapolis 500. “If you think about the Indianapolis 500, and what it means to me, to Target Chip Ganassi Racing and to most of the teams and drivers, then you see how important it is to the rest of the race. season. When you can win this race, it’s great”, explains Dario Franchitti. “Chip Ganassi (team owner, editor’s note) always tells us before each start of the season that there are two objectives: ?Win the Indy 500 and the championship?. We have therefore fulfilled one objective out of two, » puts the 39-year-old Scot into perspective. ?We had some good days, some tough ones. I will try to improve for next season »he concludes.