Franchitti to make NASCAR return for Truck Series race at St. Petersburg

Dario Franchitti will make his return to NASCAR in a one-off appearance at St. Petersburg with defending Craftsman Truck Series champions Tricon Garage.

It presents a surprising full-circle opportunity for the three-time Indianapolis 500 winner and four-time IndyCar Series champion, who left IndyCar at the end of 2007 to run the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series with Chip Ganassi Racing and returned to IndyCar in 2009 with CGR, where he drove until retiring after a brutal crash at Houston in 2013.

The chance to race at St. Pete – site of the season-opening IndyCar Series event as well, where Franchitti serves as an advisor for Ganassi’s team – in a Tricon Toyota Tundra comes via his close friend and seven-time NASCAR Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, who arranged the ride in collaboration with his Legacy Motor Club team.

“I still like winning,” the 52-year-old Hall of Famer told RACER. “But that is not the primary reason, not even the secondary reason for doing it. As time has gone on, (former colleague) Kyle Moyer helped me realize this. He said in Barry Green's book that I never raced against other people. I always raced against myself, and I was always about maximizing myself. And so this is that.

“I got the opportunity from literally a conversation with Jimmie. I said I thought it would be fun, I thought it'd be interesting to push myself again, to test myself, to do the to the whole process of trying to be competitive again. Since I stopped, I still do a lot in historic stuff; I've gotten to drive some really cool cars against some pretty good drivers. I guess this is more of the same. It's just a modern truck.”

It was the extremely violent nature of the Houston 2013 crash and the concussion Franchitti suffered – the last of many in a racing journey that started in the early 1990s – which brought an unplanned end to his professional career. He intended to continue in IndyCar with Ganassi in 2014 and then shift into the FIA World Endurance Championship with Porsche as its 919 LMP1 Hybrid program was developing into an unstoppable force. But heeding his doctors’ advice was necessary at the time, and while he isn’t pining to launch a steady return to the pro ranks, Franchitti has remained busy in a myriad of the aforementioned historic race cars and a recent endurance sports car outing in a Mercedes-AMG GT3.

“Time is a great healer, and correct, this is not a comeback for me,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve been in cars something like 12 days out of the last two weeks, so this isn’t too much of a change of normal. I’m in cars constantly, and all the testing with the Gordon Murray Automotive cars and the track cars, the performance level of that thing is up there, and that's really made me more comfortable doing other stuff. We’ll get to test the truck at Sebring, which I know well, just to get a feel for it, and I can’t bloody wait.”

Franchitti’s No. 1 Tricon Tundra will be dressed in the colors of Dollar Tree and he’ll have Johnson on his timing stand.

“When this came up with the NASCAR Truck race on the Saturday, I thought, ‘Well, I'm not going to get to drive an Indy car there; I'm too bloody old for one thing, but I love the track, I love St. Pete,” said the winner of the 2011 Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. “Jimmie and I have spent a lot of time together over the last couple years at the track, racing together, racing against each other occasionally, and just having fun away from the track. We were basically drinking a glass of wine, and I said to him, ‘God, that would be fun to do that at St. Pete.’ And the next morning, he calls me and goes, ‘Hey, found your truck!’

"Jimmie's been the driving force behind it. We know the equipment's good because the Tricon guys obviously won the championship. Dollar Tree’s come on board and Scott Borchetta’s involved and Legacy Motor Club, obviously. And then JJ will be my guy on the stand, on the radio. I know the track like the back of my hand, which is an advantage, but the big disadvantage is a lack of familiarity with the vehicle. But It'll be part of the challenge.”