Franchitti has matched his heroes

There's a cruel irony in the fact that Dario Franchitti now has the freedom to do pretty much anything he wants, except for the thing he wants to do most of all.

It's difficult to think of any other modern driver in any professional category anywhere in the world with such a deeply ingrained affinity with motorsport's heritage as Franchitti.

Many successful athletes begin to think of their legacy as their career enters the advanced years, but in Franchitti's case that came less from personal ego than from an honest desire to be a worthy bearer of the torch he inherited from those who came before him.

He didn't get the luxury of being able to leave the cockpit on his own terms. That decision was made for him by his medical advisors.

Nasty as the fractures to his vertebra and ankle that he sustained in the crash in Houston were, they didn't represent much more than a frustrating and uncomfortable winter before a return to the cockpit sometime early next year.

This Houston accident proved an impact too far for Franchitti © LAT

The problem was the concussion. It wasn't the first major blow to the skull that the Scot has suffered during his career, and it has since been reported that his recovery from this one was taking longer than expected.

The fear is not for his condition as it is right now - all medical updates continue to point toward a complete recovery - but rather, the consequences should Franchitti suffer another head trauma in the future.

In short, Franchitti could have raced again in 2014, and been just as quick as the guy who took four IndyCar pole positions this year. But the trade-off between the prospect of a bit more silverware against the potentially life-altering ramifications of even a relatively minor accident were too great, and ultimately, there was not even a choice to be made.

And so, the 40-year-old sits at home in Scotland, still recovering from his injuries, fretting over whether Celtic can escape the group stages in the Champions League, and now, percolating the beginnings of a complete reinvention of his world. For someone who committed himself so fully to his love of the sport, this is more than just a career change; it's a reframing of his entire life, almost like one adapting to the loss of a limb.

Franchitti has said many times that he would not appraise his career until it was over, and his exit is still too raw to have allowed much time for reflection yet. But if it's a legacy that he wanted, then when the time for contemplation comes, he's going to like what he sees.

Franchitti celebrates his first IndyCar title in 2007 © LAT

Numbers matter in all American sports - just look at the raft of statistics that can be applied to baseball players - and in purely numerical terms, Franchitti's career stacks up against the best of them.

Four IndyCar championships, three of which were won in succession. Three portraits alongside the other Indianapolis 500 winners on the Borg Warner Trophy. Thirty-one wins, 92 podiums, and 119 top five finishes in IndyCar.

And then there are the broader achievements, such as winning the Daytona 24 Hours, the Sebring 12 Hours, the Indy 500 and the IndyCar title within the space of 12 months. Mario Andretti and AJ Foyt are the only other drivers to have won all four of those honours, but neither managed to do them consecutively.

Much like his Ganassi team-mate and friend Scott Dixon, the fact that Franchitti never raced in Formula 1 was a matter of circumstance and timing rather than talent. His flirtation with the world championship began with half a day's running in a McLaren at Jerez in 1995 after winning the McLaren AUTOSPORT BRDC Award and ended with an unhappy test with Jaguar in mid-2000. Even if he had got the latter drive, Jaguar's history from around that time suggests that his first plunge into the F1 waters would have been rather bracing.

F1 fans might assume that Franchitti's lack of a grand prix presence somehow makes him impossible to 'measure'. This is a mistake: his US career was bookended by two of the most competitive eras of US open-wheel history.

In his first few years, Franchitti was going up against the likes of Alex Zanardi, Paul Tracy, Jimmy Vasser, Gil de Ferran, Michael Andretti, Greg Moore, and Juan Pablo Montoya. In his final season, 10 different drivers found their way into Victory Lane. It's not hard to come up with a list of grand prix winners from the past decade who would have withered against that kind of competition.

Franchitti had to take on Montoya in CART © LAT

For all of his F1 aspirations, Franchitti never considered the US to be a Plan B: indeed, he rejected a full-time test driver contract from McLaren in order to fully focus on CART.

And as he embraced America, so it embraced him back. Aside from numbers, the other thing that American sport takes seriously is its heroes, and if Franchitti is underappreciated in Europe, there is no doubting his status across the Atlantic.

As recently as last year he confessed to still feeling slightly awe-struck whenever he encountered Johnny Rutherford or Parnelli Jones in the paddock at Indianapolis, and while he may never accept himself as their equal in his own mind, there's little doubt about how the rest of the sport will remember him.

Amid the Twitter overdrive that inevitably follows news of the magnitude of Franchitti's retirement, Mark Webber lamented that he'd have "loved for [Franchitti] to have joined me in the Porsche [sportscar] in the future". Bearing in mind Franchitti's soft spot for Porsches, it's not hard to imagine how the prospect of trying to win Le Mans for Stuttgart would have resonated with him.

Who knows whether it ever would have happened. But it would have been fun to find out. It's sad that we've been denied that prospect, along with all of the other chapters that will remain unwritten.

On the other hand, his decision to step away has ensured that all of us in the sport can look forward to a healthy, cognisant Dario Franchitti standing around in the paddock talking about Jim Clark memorabilia for years to come.

Whatever twang he might feel deep in his gut every time he hears the cars fire up in the garage is immeasurably better than the alternative.