The Young Drivers: No.3 - Dario Franchitti

Where were they then?

No matter how successful a driver's career is, and how many accolades, awards and titles they pick up along the way, they all started somewhere - they all remember a time when they were desperately trying to make it, not knowing whether they'd be one of the lucky few who do.

Dario Franchitti had been nominated for the McLaren Autosport BRDC Award in 1990 and had experienced what it's like to be in contention for such a career-changing prize, only to be left disappointed at the end of the night.

But in 1992, after graduating from Formula Vauxhall Junior he finished fourth in the Vauxhall Lotus standings, and earned another shot at impressing the award's judging panel.

This is what Autosport magazine wrote about Franchitti when he became the award's fourth winner

The most amazing thing about Dario Franchitti was how calm he seemed. Show him a plate of canapes in the pre-dinner reception at the Autosport Awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London, and they were gone in an instant. The other McLaren Autosport Young Driver of the Year finalists could only look on in wonder. Surely no one could stomach food at a moment like this.

Dario Franchitti and David Coulthard at the Autosport Show © LAT

Yet, Dario was clearly hungry, moving down to the Great Room to polish off a full dinner, complete with an extra pudding, while the others could only pick at their plates distractedly, quaking at the announcement that lurked ahead.

While the other 1000 or so guests chatted and joked, and enjoyed the presentations, the finalists simply sweated.

Maintaining the suspense, they were kept on tenterhooks until the final announcement to find out the news, wait until McLaren's new F1 signing Michael Andretti and Autosport editor Andy Hallbery joined Haymarket managing director Simon Taylor on the stage, armed with the trophy and that vital cheque for £20,000.

Dario said last year, when he was also awaiting the outcome of the Young Driver of the Year award as one of the six finalists, that he was praying not to be selected, so he wouldn't have to step up under the spotlights and make a speech to the assembled ranks.

This year, when Simon Taylor revealed that it was a case of second time lucky for the 19-year-old Scot, he was only too glad to hug his father and head up into the bright lights. Dario has done a great deal of growing up in the past 12 months.

Leaping up and down at a nearby table was Jackie Stewart, not a man normally given to such excesses of emotion. Yet, Jackie has a great interest in Dario and his future, having helped him through the 1992 season when Dario drove in Vauxhall Lotus for Paul Stewart Racing. With Gil de Ferran having won the British F3 Championship for PSR, Dario's selection capped a good year for the team, and Dario's new confidence on public occasions gives credence to Jackie's never ending quest for turning out polished professionals.

As Dario descended from the stage, having stopped to be photographed with a selection of Britain's world champions, he was thronged by well-wishers, many of his McLaren Autosport finalists among them.

"It doesn't get any easier, waiting for the announcement. I was very nervous. I knew I had a one in six chance, but no more." he grinned. "I'm absolutely delighted to have been chosen. It's a great honour to become the driver that McLaren and Autosport are putting their faith in for the future.

"On top of this, the award is a big thank you to my parents who have sacrificed so much for my career. My sister Carla has been a great, too, as she's used her skills as a journalist to help with my PR.

"Talking of PR, working with Jackie this year has really boosted my confidence in this area. He has helped me with finding sponsors, too. However, I have also become contracted with Carnegie, Scotland's major sports sponsorship agency. I have rugby international Gavin Hastings as my personal manager there, and Carnegie helps me with my personal sponsors. Allan McNish and Alex Jack are signed up with Carnegie, too, so motor racing is not something new to them.

"Actually, I have many advisors, with Jackie, Paul Stewart, Allan McNish, David Coulthard and David Leslie - who helped me to the Vauxhall Junior crown last year - all willing to share their experience with me. Indeed, it was excellent last night, as I was at the Scottish Motor Racing Club annual dinner and they gave me an excellent send off, wishing me the very best for tonight. It really helped my confidence.

Dario Franchitti a Mercedes-Benz ITC car at Silverstone © LAT

In addition to this, I've been on some public speaking courses. And, recently, my lawyer Peter Goodman invited me to sit in with him for a few days. It was excellent, as I learned a lot about how to draw up contracts, what it all means. It's all been an excellent education. Truly, doing Vauxhall Lotus has been all about coming into the 'real world', having to deal with sponsors and so on.

"I'll do Vauxhall Lotus again in 1993, and try to win the title. And I've decided to stay on with PSR."

This decision was greeted with surprise by the McLaren Autosport judges, for last time we spoke with Dario, when we interviewed him at Donington Park, his sights were set on F3, and he'd just set a cracking time on his run in Edenbridge Racing's F3 car, lapping 0.6 seconds faster than Class B champion Paul Evans, admittedly on a drier circuit. What made him change his mind?

"Well, I was up at Gleneagles at an end-of-season shoot with Jackie and the team sponsors. I got talking to Jackie, and he told me I was still young, so there was no hurry to move up to F3. Also, he thought I wasn't quite ready for F3 anyhow. At first my father, a racer himself until a dozen years ago, wanted me to move up to F3 as fast as possible, but now he agrees with Jackie, so Vauxhall Lotus it will be, as I'm sure they're both right in this decision.

"I loved my run in the F3 car at Donington, and was surprised at the amount of grip it offered in comparison to my Vauxhall Lotus. The whole package was so much stiffer and more precise. But it will have to wait until I have more experience of how to set up a car.

"Looking to next year, I'm already well on the way towards securing a budget. McLaren's £20,000 will be a great help here. It will make my move to living near PSR in Milton Keynes all the easier. I spent the past season commuting to Milton Keynes from my home in Scotland. In retrospect, this was not a good thing. So, I'm ready to make the move down to England full time. With the McLaren Autosport money, this move will be less troubled, and something I hopefully won't have to worry about once it's organised.

"Like last year, the worst part of the McLaren Autosport selection was the fitness, as I woke up the next morning with sore muscles. But when I move to Milton Keynes, I'll be teaming up with Tim Exeter who ran the fitness tests at Donington. After all, he's a friend of Gavin Hastings' from their days in the Scottish rugby squad.

"So, it's been a great evening. I'm very honoured to become the fourth winner of the McLaren Autosport Young Driver of the Year award. And I'm confident that I'll take the Vauxhall Lotus title next year. Watch out, too, for my young brother Marino, as he's going to go back into karting again. And he's very professional already."

Like 1991 McLaren Autosport winner Oliver Gavin, expect to see Dario in contention for another award next year.

Juan Pablo Montoya and Dario Franchitti tied in the 1999 CART points lead© LAT

Where are they now?

Franchitti was true to his word and he did take the Vauxhall Lotus in 1993, while his graduation to F3 came the following year. He scored his maiden F3 win in 1994 and finished fourth in the standings as a rookie. But that second year in which to challenge for the title never materialized and 1994 was to be his last year in single-seaters in Europe. For he, like other Award winners that would follow him, was given an opportunity with Mercedes-Benz in Germany.

The Scot spent two years with the manufacturer in the DTM and ITC before the collapse of the series. But Mercedes stuck by him and he was offered a chance to drive in America with Champ Car team Hogan Racing. Another stand-out rookie season followed and in 1998 he joined Team Green (now Andretti Green Racing). That was the making of Franchitti - he finished third in the championship with quite a buzz around him.

Franchitti was runner-up to Juan Pablo Montoya the following year, but a huge pre-season testing crash knocked him off stride and 2000 was a disappointing season. He began to put things back together in 2001 and was a regular winner again by 2002, but it was an Indianapolis 500 outing that year that led to a change of direction.

He switched to the IndyCar Series for 2003 and, though it took him a while to repeat his Champ Car results, he grew stronger and stronger, culminating in the 2007 title and victory in the Indy 500.

It seems Franchitti is never one to tire of a new challenge and this year it was off to the world of NASCAR. In probably his most challenging direction change yet, Franchitti knew the size of the task awaiting him. But he would be denied a fair crack when he broke his ankle in a crash and had to sit on the sidelines. Not long after he returned, he lost his drive.

And so next season he will be back in IndyCar with champion team Ganassi Racing, but he's not ready to call time on his NASCAR adventure just yet.

Looking back now, even after all those years of F3, DTM, Champ Car, IndyCar and NASCAR, Franchitti remembers that it was the Autosport Award, more than anything else, that changed his life.

"Winning put my name in front of some very important people who were there that night," he recalls. "Later, Norbert Haug's office at Mercedes called me, and I was on a train. The way I understood it was that Norbert's office had called Autosport to see what drivers they should recommend. When I got the call, I thought it was a wind up. They said take this number and call Mr Haug, and I said 'yeah, yeah.' By the time I got to where I was heading, I suddenly thought it might be real, so I had to call Norbert's number pretty quick!

"I won the Award in 1992 and got the DTM drive in 1995, so it wasn't immediate, but the Autosport Award really put me in the frame for something that changed my life. Getting involved with Mercedes was one of the turning points in my career. The Paul Stewart Racing days in between were also very significant.

"When I went to my first DTM race with Mercedes, I didn't really know what to expect. I'd rolled their prototype big time in testing at Hockenheim a few weeks before the season, which obviously wasn't a great start to my career there, and then I got lost in the woods being disoriented trying to walk back to the pits. All the crew found was a battered and empty car! In fact, I still have one of the damaged doors from that in Scotland. The car was destroyed. The door was about the biggest part of the car that was left.

2007 Indianapolis 500 Winner Dario Franchitti © LAT

"So I wasn't in anybody's good books at that point. At the race it all came good, I took pole position and I think the bosses were relieved - I certainly was! I remember in the pole press conference, Norbert gushing about the Autosport Young Driver programme, and it made me and a number of people from the Autosport side proud too.

"Michael Andretti presented me with my Award in London in 1992. He had just signed for McLaren to be Ayrton Senna's teammate. We both had a lot of hair at the time, and we've joked about it a lot since. But who'd have thought that 15 years later we'd have been winning the Indy 500 and the IRL championship together?"

Franchitti has seen the award from all angles too, coming back as a judge in previous years and then being there on the night when his cousin, Paul di Resta, won it in 2004.

"I've seen it from the other side too, I was a judge for number of years putting guys through their paces," he recalls. "And then I had to share a table with my cousin Paul di Resta when he was nominated, and won. It really is a pressure moment. When Paul won, I'd kind of been through it all before - twice - as a driver, so I could definitely sympathise with him, and could see he was nervous. That night, I didn't know if he'd won it or not. It was really nerve-wracking, and again it was a fantastic feeling when his name was called out.

"It was strange because when I was a judge, a lot of my friends were up for the Award, and that was a very awkward experience, because some of them won and some of them didn't. But I could never let them know and that was very hard.

"After Paul won, I called Gerhard Unger at my old AMG DTM team and said they should try him out. It's kind of history repeating itself. He was doing F3 at the time and he won the Euroseries with them. I'd love to see him get a shot in Formula One. Mercedes have been very good to him, as they were to me.

"No matter what I've achieved in racing, people will still say that I won the McLaren Autosport BRDC Award. It is a big deal, and it's helped a lot of drivers get to that next step. The people at Autosport, Ron Dennis, the people at the BRDC, have really done a hell of a job, and long may it continue because it's an important part of helping young drivers, and picking out the ones to watch.

"The whole young driver award is a big deal, and it has helped a lot of us more than you can imagine. It's hard to believe there are 20 of us now!"