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After dominating almost the entire day, Dario Franchitti’s drive for a second Indianapolis 500 victory appeared set to literally sputter.
As the final laps ticked away, Franchitti was doing everything he could to save enough fuel to take the checkered flag. In the process, he allowed 2005 Indy winner Dan Wheldon a chance to hunt him down and take the win away.
But after Franchitti took the white flag, a horrifying crash involving Mike Conway and Ryan Hunter-Reay in the short chute between Turns 3 and 4 forced the yellow and secured another Brickyard triumph for him under caution. The win also made Chip Ganassi the first team owner to win the Daytona 500 and the Indy 500 in the same year.
Franchitti returned to IndyCar last season following an ill-fated journey to NASCAR in 2008 and won the IZOD IndyCar Series championship. But the ‘500’ is considered a bigger prize than a series title, so perhaps this was the true vindication of his decision to go back to open-wheel racing.
“They showed me a list of two-time [Indy 500] winners — those guys are legends,” said Franchitti. “I said the other night, ‘I’m just a driver, those guys are legends.’ I’m so lucky to be drive for Chip and Team Target and getting in good cars, especially having gone away after we won [the IndyCar title] 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 said before, I expected to be retired by the time I was 35. This is all bonus, and it’s pretty cool.”
As for Ganassi and his accomplishment, he deferred talking about it from a personal standpoint and instead credited his employees.
“I’m just the guy that gets my name on the door, the sign in the front,” he said. “But it’s a lot of hard work by a lot of people, a lot of people that never get the attention they should. A lot of decision making that you never know if you made the right decision or not. You never know…You have no idea what a lonely world it is being a car owner these days. You’re in the middle of sponosors in this environment. We have great sponsors. But you got sponsors on one side, drivers on the other side, your team on the other side of you.
“Everybody is always pushing hard to get these cars to the front.”
Today, Franchitti was the one that pushed the hardest. He led 155 of 200 laps and was able to constantly extend his leads over pursuers in green-flag stints. However, it wasn’t as easy as it looked. With hot conditions at the Speedway, drivers had to contend with a lack of traction all race long. Franchitti was no different.
“My car was a handful, but it was a fast handful,” he said. “When it’s fast, you can hang on to it. When it’s not quite like that, you have to start making adjustments. It was a handful particularly in one. But it was a handful doing 223s when other guys were doing 221s.”
Franchitti found himself in fifth position on the final restart at Lap 166 with four other drivers — Conway, Justin Wilson, Helio Castroneves and Graham Rahal — staying out in hopes to attain another yellow and stretch their fuel loads to the finish. But one by one, all of them had to go in for one last splash of ethanol.
At Lap 192, Franchitti got the lead back and held it over Tony Kanaan, who had charged from 33rd starting position all the way to second. But Kanaan would be unable to get to P1 and had to pit with five laps remaining. That handed second place over to Wheldon, who was torn between wanting to chase after Franchitti and trying to save fuel at his Panther Racing team’s behest.
“I was hungry to win, but the team was getting on my butt about saving fuel those last three laps,” he said. “Maybe if I was young like [Graham] Rahal or Marco Andretti or myself back in the day, I would have totally ignored them. I tried to run Dario down when I saw him slowing down. I knew it was close. Just one of those things.”
The Conway/Hunter-Reay incident made the matter moot. Hunter-Reay ran out of fuel coming into Turn 3 and Conway ran over the left-front wheel of the IZOD special to launch himself and his No. 24 Dad’s Root Beer car into the air. The car flipped before going into the catch fence, scattering debris everywhere and leaving not much more than a tub.
Conway was flown to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis with a broken left leg, but was awake and alert. As for Hunter-Reay, who came away with a thumb ligament injury after an earlier pit road incident with Scott Dixon, he was stunned that Conway’s car didn’t come down on his head in the crash.
“When I looked at the replay, I guess it came down on the camera, right on top,” he said. “At 230 miles per hour, that’s as close as it gets. I hope Mike is all right.”
As for the main attraction going into Sunday’s event — pole sitter Helio Castroneves and his quest to become a four-time winner of the ‘500’ — it didn’t pan out as a lot of people predicted. Castroneves stalled his No. 3 Team Penske car on a pit stop at Lap 145, which effectively ended his chances. He finished ninth after the yellow flag he needed to make it to the finish didn’t come.
“Unfortunately, silly mistakes put us in the back,” he said. “I’m very disappointed. I’m more disappointed with the mistake. Certianly, I am very upset for my guys. They did an incredible job the whole month long. They should walk out of here with their heads high.”
Marco Andretti, after triggering an official review due to his post-race comments about multiple cars passing him in the final yellow, was moved to third place following the event. That dropped Alex Lloyd to fourth place, Danica Patrick to fifth, and Scott Dixon to sixth.
Mario Romancini also benefited from the review, moving ahead one spot of Simona de Silvestro to become the top rookie of this year’s ‘500.’ He is credited with a 13th place finish, with de Silvestro finishing 14th.
In the IZOD IndyCar Series standings, Will Power’s lead dwindled to 11 points over Franchitti as the series heads for Saturday night’s Firestone 550K at Texas Motor Speedway. Dixon is 24 points back of Power, followed by Castroneves (-28) and Hunter-Reay (-52).
Video credit: Indy Racing League.
