The night before the Indianapolis 500 Dario Franchitti dreamed of the race and Tony Kanaan. He dreamed that him and Kanaan would go head to head for the win at the fabled Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
And when Franchitti saw Kanaan, who started in 33rd place, creep up to second place behind him, he thought his nightmare was coming true.
“I thought, ‘I knew it,’ Franchitti said.
However Franchitti didn’t let his dream intimidate him as he focused on both moving away from Kanaan and saving as much fuel as possible. Kanaan was forced to pit due to lack of fuel, which Franchitti said took the pressure off of him.
“Until he pitted, I never took my eye off him because he can always surprise you,” Franchitti said. “He didn’t get the result that he deserved, but to have gone from last to second was cool.”
However, Franchitti and Kanaan were never expected to be competing in the end of the race or at any logical point, as the two started thirty positions apart. Instead much of the pre-race hype was about three-time winner Helio Castroneves.
Castroneves won everything—the pole and the pit crew challenge—except the one that mattered after 200 laps on the excruciatingly hot track. After being pegged the favorite by many, the sheer dominance that Franchitti, and not Castroneves, displayed was unexpected.
“What an awesome car he (Franchitti) had,” Castroneves said. “Ganassi (Chip) did an incredible job to put him up there. It was the car to beat today. We tried.”
“Unfortunately, silly mistakes put us in the back.”
Franchitti was indeed the car to beat as he led 155 of the 200 laps en route to his second Indianapolis 500 victory. In the past several years the driver leading the most laps has failed to win the race, as fellow Target Chip Ganassi teammate, Scott Dixon, led the most laps in both 2008 and 2009, failing to win either race. The last time a winning driver led more laps was in 2000, when Juan Pablo Montoya led 167 laps.
Target Chip Ganassi Racing drivers have led the most laps in the last three Indianapolis 500 races. Franchitti also is now ranked 21st on the all-time lap list. Prior to the race he was ranked 59th.
With his second Indianapolis 500 victory, Franchitti becomes the 17th driver to kiss the bricks at least twice. He also is the first driver from Scotland to win the race duplicate times.
Another record was also set with Franchitti’s victory on Sunday, as Chip Ganassi hit a unique milestone. Ganassi became the first owner to win both the Daytona 500, under driver Jamie McMurray, and the Indianapolis 500 in the same year.
However, even though this accomplishment is extraordinary, Ganassi has remained humble about his success in the racing world.
“I didn’t drive either car. I didn’t change any tires. I didn’t put any fuel in the cars,” Ganassi said. “I don’t do any of that stuff. I have hundreds of people that do that kind of thing. I’m very, very lucky is what it comes down to. I’m very lucky.”
?“I’m just the guy that gets my name on the door, the sign in the front. But it’s a lot of hard work by a lot of people, a lot of people that never get the attention they should.”
The victory gave Ganassi his fourth overall Indianapolis 500 win as an owner, with two coming from Franchitti. While only 16 other drivers have managed to accomplish the feat Franchitti did on Sunday, he feels that it does not place him among the great drivers of the past.
“Those guys are legends. I said the other night, ‘I’m just a driver, those guys are legends,’ Franchitti said. “I’m so lucky to be driving for Chip and Team Target, getting in good cars, especially having gone away after we won in ’07. To be invited back was pretty cool. To have won a championship and an Indy 500, I didn’t expect any of this…I expected to be retired by the time I was 35.
“This is all a bonus and it’s pretty cool.”