Back to Green: Restoring Dario Franchitti's 2002 Indy 500 car

The process of restoration will always be an uncertain adventure, but the complexity seems to heighten dramatically with racecars. Parts and information are often in very limited supply, and who knows what challenges, surprises or – maybe –opportunities, await?

Don Hoevel runs a restoration and prep shop near Chicago and was entrusted with the mechanical restoration of Dallara IR-02 chassis 015. Hoevel’s résumé includes working for Newman/Haas Racing; he was crew chief for Cristiano da Matta when the Brazilian won the CART title in 2002.

The ex-Andretti Green Racing Indy Racing League car came to him looking more or less as it did after the late Tony Renna’s final race of the 2002 IRL season, with an initial question from the owner, “Can you get it running?”

When the car rolled in, it appeared to be relatively complete, but things changed rather quickly. Hoevel recalls: “We pulled the headers off and said, ‘Uh, we’ve got a problem here.’ I looked at the exhaust ports and you could see to the other side of the engine because there was nothing inside.”

Hoevel was able to source a complete period 3.5-liter Chevrolet Indy V8 engine, but discovered a new set of challenges.

“We started struggling with electronics,” he admits. “Getting the Pi [data acquisition] system to work and then getting it programmed to match the ECU turned out to be a huge challenge.”

Eventually, however, Hoevel and Co. got the car running again. And the project was not entirely about overcoming setbacks; there was one positive surprise lurking as well.

“John Grunewald worked with me at Newman/Haas, but he still has his notes from when he was at Team Green back in the day,” explains Hoevel. “He discovered it was Dario’s car for the 2002 Indy 500: the serial numbers and car numbers started matching, and we took the headrest of and there was a ‘DF.’”

Everyone involved decided to bring the Dallara back to its 2002 state as the car in which Franchitti made his Indy 500 debut.

Mechanical restoration complete, it was time to hand the car off to Vintage Indy head Mike Lashmett, who would see things through to the finish line.

“The car only ran once with that 7-Eleven Big Gulp livery [the 2002 Indy 500],” says Lashmett, “so our primary source for photographs was the IMS Museum. I went through the photos that showed the little nuances and details. From there it was just a matter of letting the specialists do their work.”

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FRANCHITTI'S FIRST 500

During the war between Championship Auto Racing Teams and the Indy Racing League, the CART squads started making “raids” on the Indy 500, and to great effect. Chip Ganassi Racing tackled the race in 2000 with Juan Pablo Montoya, who won as a rookie, and Jimmy Vasser. Then in ’01, Ganassi was joined by Team Penske with Helio Castroneves and Gil de Ferran, who duly finished 1-2, and Team Green with a single-car entry for Michael Andretti, who came home third ahead of the three Ganassi entries. That’s correct, the top six in the IRL’s marquee race were entries from CART teams.

For 2002, however, Penske switched to IRL full-time, whereas Team Green and Ganassi were still outsiders. Andretti, rookie Dario Franchitti and Tracy qualified 25th, 28th and 29th for Team Green in their Chevy-powered Dallara IR-02s – cars vastly different from the Reynard-Hondas they raced full-time in the CART series. By this point, Franchitti had accumulated eight podium finishes on CART’s ovals, but was still seeking his first win.

It was Tracy who went on to duel with Castroneves for the victory (and arguably won it), while Franchitti (above) came home 19th.

Later that year, the future IndyCar great would score his first and last oval win in a CART car at Rockingham, UK, before Team Green – morphing into Andretti Green Racing – switched to the IRL in ’03.

This story originally appeared in the June/July 2023 edition of Vintage Motorsport magazine.