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George Dario Marino Franchitti,〔 MBE (born 19 May 1973), known professionally as Dario Franchitti, is a retired British racing driver. He is a four time IndyCar Series champion (2007,2009,2010,2011), a three time winner of the Indianapolis 500 (2007,2010,2012) as well as a winner of the 24 Hours of Daytona (2008). Franchitti started his career in his native United Kingdom in the early 1990s, competing in Formula Vauxhall and Formula Three and was also the winner of the McLaren Autosport BRDC Award in 1992. After Franchitti did not secure a single-seater drive in 1995, he was contracted by the AMG team to compete in touring cars in the DTM and its successor— the International Touring Car Championship. Despite 2 seasons with relative success, the series folded at the end of the 1996 season, again leaving Franchitti without a drive. Mercedes placed Franchitti in CART in 1997 with the Hogan Racing team. Franchitti spent 6 seasons in CART, where he won 10 races with the Team Green squad that he joined in 1998; he failed to win a championship title, with a best final position of 2nd-place in 1999, behind Juan Pablo Montoya in a tie-breaker. Team Green moved to the IndyCar Series for the 2003 campaign, with Franchitti remaining in the team. Franchitti's first season for IndyCar was disrupted by an injury, but won his first races the following season. His breakout year came in 2007, when he won the rain-shortened Indianapolis 500 as one of 4 victories in his route to a first career championship title in a final-race title decider with Scott Dixon. At the end of the season, Franchitti was named as BBC Scotland's ''Sports Personality of the Year''. After an ill-fated move to NASCAR in 2008 (which ended after half a season) Franchitti returned to IndyCar in 2009, driving for Chip Ganassi Racing. Franchitti won on his 2nd start back in the series, and eventually took 5 wins as he won a 2nd championship, again in a final race championship decider against Dixon and Team Penske's Ryan Briscoe. He retained the title in 2010, again with a final race championship win over Penske's Will Power; Franchitti's strong form on ovals – including a 2nd Indianapolis 500 victory – allowed him to overhaul Power by 5 points at the final race. His 3rd consecutive and 4th overall title came in 2011, in which he battled Power for the championship the second time but the championship win ultimately was decided in favour of Franchitti, after the season's final race was abandoned due to a serious crash that resulted in the death of his close friend and former team-mate Dan Wheldon. A new car was introduced for the 2012 season, in which Franchitti only scored 1 victory – in the Indianapolis 500 – to become the 10th driver to win at least 3 Indianapolis 500's during his/her career. On 6 October 2013, Franchitti was involved in a serious crash in the Grand Prix of Houston, when his car flew into catch-fencing after contact with the car of Takuma Sato. Franchitti suffered 2 fractured vertebrae, a broken ankle, and a concussion in the crash. Later he would learn that he had forgotten some of his past. A month later, on November 14, Franchitti announced his immediate retirement from motor racing on medical advice; he retired with 31 victories from 265 starts in his American open-wheel racing career, a tally which put him in a tie for #9 on the all-time wins list with Paul Tracy. ==Early career== Franchitti was born in Bathgate, West Lothian, Scotland. While attending Stewart's Melville College in Edinburgh, he became interested in karting. Allan McNish credited a large part of the start given to himself, Franchitti and David Coulthard as being down to David Leslie senior and junior.〔(Allan McNish interview part 2 on qosfc.com )〕 Franchitti won the Karting Scottish Junior Championship in 1984, the British Junior Championships in 1985 and 1986 and the Scottish senior title in 1988. He progressed to Formula Vauxhall Junior where he won the championship with four victories in 1991. He moved up to Formula Vauxhall Lotus in 1992, where he joined Paul Stewart Racing. In his first year, he finished fourth in the overall championship, and was named the McLaren/Autosport Young Driver of the Year. Staying with the team for the next season, he won the championship in 1993. He graduated to the British Formula 3 Championship in 1994, where he finished fourth and won one race in his first year. However, he was not retained for 1995 which was his final year in single-seaters in Europe. Instead, Franchitti was contracted by AMG Racing to drive a works Mercedes C-Class in the German Touring Car Championship and the related International Touring Car Championship, where he finished fifth and third respectively. He continued in the ITC in 1996, finishing fourth overall with one race win. In 1997, Franchitti was offered a deal to become McLaren's test driver which would have seen him flying to Europe to test during the week, returning to America to race in CART. He ultimately turned this down, preferring instead to pour his energies into racing in CART for the Hogan team. Franchitti tested for the Jaguar F1 team at Silverstone in 2000, but the car proved to be problematic. These troubles combined with him still recovering from neck discs ruptured in a crash at Homestead earlier that year. The test was ultimately a disappointment and the door to racing for Jaguar effectively closed. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dario Franchitti」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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