IndyCar season review: Dario Franchitti

A year of frequently fantastic on-track action ended with 10 different winners from 19 races, a worthy champion, a heart-warming result in the Indy 500 and?yes, some troubling incidents, too " mainly, but not exclusively, off-track.

The fact that the ?500? winner finished outside the top 10 in the championship compelled us to extend our more in-depth assessment, and 11 seemed such a weird number?so we went for the top 12 finishers in the 2013 IZOD IndyCar Series. In the coming days, Marshall Pruett will do a mop-up of the almost-made-its, which include winners such as Takuma Sato and Mike Conway, as well as drivers who grabbed runner-up places, such as Graham Rahal, James Jakes, Simona de Silvestro and Josef Newgarden. For now though, Robin Miller, David Malsher and Marshall Pruett are counting down the dirty dozen. Today, it's?

10th " DARIO FRANCHITTIChip Ganassi Racing Dallara-HondaBest finish " 3rd, Pocono, Toronto 1, Mid-Ohio, SonomaBest qualifying " 1st, Long Beach, Detroit 1, Toronto 1, SonomaMarshall Pruett writes

Coming off his fourth consecutive IndyCar Series championship, Dario Franchitti was the first to admit the new-for-2012 Dallara chassis wasn't a perfect match for his driving style. The previous Dallara, which delivered those titles and two Indy 500 wins, needed to be driven extremely hard to extract ultimate pace, but it was done with a bit of finesse. Franchitti's natural style was rewarded, and the wins came at a regular clip. Dallara's DW12, which begged to be abused, felt like a pair of shoes that never quite fit.

2013 should have been the year where, after a busy season of development, Franchitti had a car that handled to his liking, but the combination of the Ganassi's team's errant path on damping and Firestone's decidedly different street course tires saw the Scot start off the season at St. Pete with a giant thud. Engine issues at the next round in Barber left Franchitti last in the points, and after two consecutive 25th-place finishes, his roller coaster season was about to take off.

A pole at Long Beach was followed with a fourth-place result. Seventh at Brazil also served as a nice upward trend, but then he and the rest of the Ganassi team suffered through a forgettable month of May. The defending Indy 500 winner had no hope of repeating as Honda watched Chevy dominate from the moment practice began.

From what was arguably the roller coaster's lowest point of the season " at least at that point " was met with competitive runs at Detroit, Texas and Milwaukee. An uncompetitive outing at Iowa was the next dip for Franchitti, qualifying 21st and finishing 20th after four consecutive runs to eighth or better.

The roller coaster was on the rise at Pocono, the site of Ganassi's well-documented turnaround this season, where Franchitti scored his best finish of the first 11 rounds, taking third behind teammates Charlie Kimball and race winner Scott Dixon. But if there was one defining race of 2013 for Franchitti, it was Pocono.

The two-mile oval is the kind of track where Franchitti is normally expected to shine, but he and his engineer Chris Simmons were forced to settle for third, behind Dixon and Kimball, and did not lead a single lap. In 2011, you would have expected the No. 10 to lap the field.

From Pocono to Sonoma, Franchitti amassed four podiums " all third-place finishes " and a fourth place at Toronto 2. It was one of the strongest five-race stints recorded by any IndyCar driver in 2013, and demonstrated how far he and Simmons had come to grips with the DW12. Dixon and Kimball, however, won four of those five events.

Franchitti's roller coaster season took another plunge at Baltimore when his braking system surrendered well before the end of the race. Fifteenth and one lap down at Houston Race 1 and 15th with a season-ending crash in Houston 2 was a cruel and unfitting end to his season. Hopefully that damn roller coaster has been parked for good.

If there's a positive to take from Franchitti's frustrating year, it's how unrewarding it must have been for one of the all-time greats. Legacy matters to Franchitti, which means the idea of ending his career on his terms and with a more befitting place in the final standings will add even more motivation during his recovery process. Like his dear friend Tony Kanaan, who is coming off his worst season in the IndyCar Series after placing 11th in the standings, 2014 should be about setting the record straight for Franchitti.Robin Miller writes?

Four podiums and four pole positions is a damn fine year for many racers. But four-time IndyCar champ Dario Franchitti's expectations are higher than most and while 2013 had some good moments, it was more or less one he'd like to forget.

For the first time since 2006, and for the only the third time in his U.S. open-wheel career, Franchitti didn't win a race before his grinding accident at Houston ended his season one race prematurely.

That's hard to accept when you're as accomplished as the three-time Indy 500 winner " and it wasn't because he didn't have the speed. Turning 40 just before his favorite race in May, Franchitti drove with the same spirit he had 15 years earlier and could have easily been in Victory Lane a couple times.

Following a pair of terrible outings to open 2013 after the Target team admitted it had taken the wrong path in winter preparations, the master of street racing started on the pole at Long Beach and led 27 laps before a pit stop issue put him too far behind to catch up. He wound up fourth. He captured the pole at Belle Isle but had to start 10th because of the penalty for changing engines yet rallied to take sixth and backed this up with fifth the next day.

Again he was on pole at Toronto and paced 20 laps before his tires went off and he faded, only to recover for third place. In the second show, he started from the front row again, but a tangle with Helio Castroneves damaged his front wing so he pitted and dropped to 12th before making a great charge to take fourth. Another pole at Sonoma started with promise (he led 17 laps) but finished in third place.

For a guy who's caught some good breaks during the past few years, Dario couldn't buy one in 2013 and the accident that fractured his ankle and back was more of the same. But sheet time hasn't seemed to sap his desire to continue and that's good news.

There's a lot of mileage on his body, but Franchitti still has a couple good years left to try and join A.J., Big Al and Rick in that exclusive club four-time Indy winners' club.David Malsher writes?

It was at Iowa this year that rumors regarding Dario Franchitti's future really kicked into high gear. That event was (at that point) the nadir of his season, his car lacking mechanical grip, as well as the ?feel? Dario seeks from a racecar. ?We were kind of OK in the first stint,? he mused, ?but I spent the remaining 200 laps just trying not to crash??

But there was a significant upswing in his tone when he said he and the team were heading to Sebring to try and correct their road/street course setup. Anyone so enthusiastic about two days in sweltering Florida in June was not going there without a sense of purpose, without hopes of reaping reward.

Although his results improved over the next five races, taken as a whole, Franchitti's season didn't reflect his pace (four poles), and in that respect, it continued the theme of 2012, albeit without the centerpiece of an Indy 500 triumph. As ever, there were days when he was superior to his teammate Scott Dixon, when he could extract more speed from the car while also making fewer little errors. But unfortunately for Dario, the majority of those occasions came when the Target cars were off the pace, or at least, not on the pace over a whole race. I still wonder if he (alone) might have had something for Takuma Sato at Long Beach if not for that long pit stop. The No. 10 team, like a few others, must have cursed its misguided plan for a two-stop strategy in Mid-Ohio. And given the ridiculous amount of amateur driving seen at Baltimore, there's no reason why, even from 24th on the grid, Franchitti couldn't have won had it not been for a peculiar brake system failure.

And there were other days too where the 40-year-old's dedication to duty was very apparent. The car was by no means a civilized machine at Texas Motor Speedway, yet he dragged it home sixth, beating more fancied runners such as polesitter Will Power and James Hinchcliffe. Then there was the storm through the field in Toronto 2 from last (after breaking his front wing on lap 1) to finish fourth " Dario's favorite drive of the year. And how about that last-lap battle with Sato at Houston that ended so badly for him? That was over a mere 10th place, yet there he was, lining up a pass on the outside of a very quick blind turn.

So Franchitti's lost none of his speed, none of his willingness to put his sporran on the line, he remains technically adept and he still works hard. Yeah, medical condition permitting, he'll surely return. But it's a damn shame that's what we're all wondering about right now.?