Dario Franchitti Aims for History at Indy 500

“Short hair and long hair twice,” he said, feigning a frown.

Then, turning serious, he said: “The winner on Sunday will get around $2.5 million, but this is it. This is why we race.”

Franchitti, 40, has won three of the last six Indy 500 races, including last year’s. Sunday, he will attempt to become the fourth driver — and first since 1991 — to claim a fourth title.

Such possibility has Indianapolis buzzing. The cover of the race day program is a photograph of A. J. Foyt, Rick Mears and Al Unser, the only three drivers to win the race four times. It folds out to include the four others with three titles, including Franchitti and Helio Castroneves, the Brazilian driver who will also race Sunday.

Franchitti is quick to brush aside talk of No. 4.

“I know it’s the big story,” he said, “but I’m thinking the same way I do every year I come here: how do you win?”

Only when the talk turns to history does he grow introspective.

“I can relate to it a bit more that way,” he said. “To have won three and to be in the company with the drivers I am, for a kid from Scotland, it’s quite something.”

Franchitti, raised in Bathgate, with Italian roots, seems an unlikely candidate for an IndyCar historian, someone who revels in the tradition of the 104-year-old Indianapolis Motor Speedway ahead of the 97th running of its most famous race.

He grew up watching Formula One races and first raced in the 500 in 2002. He is almost professorial in his admiration of the past, and famous for it, too. At Wednesday’s Community Day at the track, several fans presented Franchitti with mementos of his favorite driver, Clark, who died in a crash five years before Franchitti was born.

Franchitti’s sense of history extends to his own life. He has kept the suits he has worn in nearly every professional race, and he subscribes to about 20 automotive magazines. For his birthday last week, his father, George, tracked down Dario’s first childhood go-cart from a farmer near Bathgate. He restored it and presented it to his son in an emotional exchange that was filmed by ESPN.

George Franchitti was an ice cream manufacturer who raced recreationally and passed his devotion to cars to his children. Dario’s brother, Marino Franchitti, has raced in the American Le Mans Series, and a cousin, Paul di Resta, in Formula One.

It took Dario Franchitti until his fifth Indianapolis 500 to take the checkered flag, but it was during his first race that the track stirred something inside him.

“This is the hardest track there is,” he said. “Racing here is the only thing in my life that gets better the more I do it.”

After winning the 500 and the IndyCar season championship in 2007, Franchitti left for Nascar with an eye on a new challenge. He lasted only one season, citing his fondness for the Indy 500 and the thrill of open-wheel racing, where significantly higher speeds are reached than in stock cars. “It’s the difference between flying a normal plane and a jet fighter,” Franchitti said.

Two years after his return, he won at Indianapolis for a second time. He was first again last year in a thrilling finish, despite starting 16th and dropping to last after a spinout in pit lane early in the race. This year, he faces a similar task after Chevrolet engines nabbed the top 10 pole positions. Franchitti and his Honda engine will start 17th.

“He’s the most technical racer I’ve ever seen,” the driver Tony Kanaan said of Franchitti. “Everything has to be just so for Dario in his preparation, and that’s why he’s so good on the track. He’s meticulous. We call him Princess sometimes.”

Franchitti looks like the consummate racecar driver. He has flowing black hair, streaked by gray. His face is framed by thick sideburns and his dark eyebrows peer out from above sunglasses, which he almost always wears.

At the track Wednesday, he scooted around the infield in a golf cart, signing autographs for fans and sponsors. He signed posters, milk jugs, tires and giant vodka bottles. He posed with the Borg-Warner trophy, named after an auto supply company, for a promotional photo shoot.

Finally he returned to his trailer, for a minute to himself before meetings with his engineers. Tacked to a door is an old-looking photograph. What looks to be another homage to the history of racing is actually a joke — a Photoshopped image of Franchitti’s face on a driver sitting in a 1930s-era racecar. It was a gift from his crew for his 250th start earlier this season.

“I can’t tell you what it would mean to cross the finish line first Sunday,” Franchitti said, looking at the picture. “If I do it, it will be part of history; then come find me.”

Wheels Blog: Franchitti and Castroneves Pause in New York Before Indianapolis 500

Richard Drew/Associated Press Scotland’s Dario Franchitti, left, and Brazil’s Helio Castroneves were interviewed in New York on Monday.

On Monday, IndyCar sent the drivers for this Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 on a press tour to cities around North America. New York can rest easy in its title as the media capital of the world: it got the only pair of three-time Indy winners in the lineup, Dario Franchitti of Scotland and Helio Castroneves of Brazil.

Franchitti, the defending champion who also won in 2007 and 2010, is stuck in midpack, in the middle of the sixth row, after a weak performance by most of the Honda-powered teams in qualifying. His Ganassi Racing teammate, Scott Dixon of New Zealand, is next to him, in 16th starting position. Castroneves, in a Chevrolet-powered Penske car, starts eighth, in the middle of Row 3.

“I am worried,” Franchitti said of the apparent disparity between the Honda and Chevy engines, although most teams will be switching to fresh engines for the race itself, giving Honda a chance to perform some tweaks.

“Last year, we had an even bigger deficit,” Franchitti said. Obviously, that didn’t hurt him on race day. “The Honda guys brought in a new engine and made a big step forward in fuel consumption and horsepower. Hopefully, they can bring something similar this time.”

Castroneves offered some hope for Franchitti. “It doesn’t matter if you have the fastest car,” said Castroneves, who won the race in 2001, 2002 and 2009. “You need everything going right for you.”

Both drivers said they were impressed by the depth of driving talent and quality of the teams in this 500. “There’s probably 20-something cars that can win that race,” Franchitti said. “There’s a drop-off in some of the cars, but it’s only maybe three, four guys.”

Like the Kentucky Derby in horse racing, the Indy 500 is an event that draws many viewers who do not regularly follow the sport. Asked for viewing tips for newcomers, Franchitti pointed to “the subtleties of what’s going on.”

“You’re not going to see big slides or big steering movements,” he said. Instead, the in-car cameras, Franchitti said, can be telltales: any driver using anything but the smoothest, slightest steering input is having a handling problem.

He also suggested that viewers call up indycar.com to follow the race timing and scoring. “You can see if someone is moving up from the back of the pack,” he said.

“If you see a car really close behind another car, you know that person has a very good car,” Castroneves suggested, referring to the difficulty most teams have in getting a car to handle well once it is in the turbulent air coming off a car ahead.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway has received approval from the State of Indiana for millions of dollars in loans for improvements. One planned project would light the track for night racing. But Franchitti would not want to see the Indy 500 run under lights. “I don’t think you mess with 100 years of tradition,” he said.

Jamie Squire/Getty Images Helio Castroneves, driver of the No. 3 Shell V-Power/Pennzoil Ultra Team Penske Chevrolet, after qualifying for the 2013 Indianapolis 500.

Franchitti can appreciate tradition, being a serious student of racing history. “I read anything I can get,” he said. “I collect memorabilia. I talk to drivers who have gone before. No matter how long these guys have been out of the car, they still get it.”

(A little more from the history department: Castroneves and Franchitti are tied with Bobby Unser, Johnny Rutherford, Mauri Rose, Wilbur Shaw and Louis Meyer for the second-highest number of Indy 500 victories.)

He is the second Scot to win Indy, the other being Jim Clark, in 1965. Franchitti had a dream experience not long ago when he had the chance to drive Clark’s Indy-winning Lotus 38-Ford at the speedway. “It was something I never thought would happen, ” he said. “I saw it at the Henry Ford Museum. They let me walk behind the rope and touch it. I thought that was as close as I’d ever get to it. It was one of the greatest days of my life.”

A fellow Scot, Derrick Walker, will take over as the president of operations and competition for the IndyCar series after Sunday’s race (during which he will be the team manager for the pole-sitter, Ed Carpenter). Franchitti and Castroneves said they were happy to see Walker get the job.

“I think it’s a great hire for the series,” Franchitti said. “I pushed for it years ago. The only facet of experience he doesn’t have is as a driver.”

Walker owned his own team for many years and before that ran the Penske IndyCar team.

“There’s nothing like putting a person in that position who’s had to struggle to balance the books each year,” said Franchitti. Either he or Castroneves would be tied with A.J. Foyt, Rick Mears and Al Unser Sr. for the most Indy 500 victories with a win on Sunday.

And that would mean another trip to New York.