Dario Franchitti's greatest drives

From Formula Vauxhall Lotus to the Indy 500, via the Daytona 24 Hours. In a career spanning more than two decades and nearly 50 race wins, Dario Franchitti scored many great successes.

Now that the four-time IndyCar champion has hung up his helmet, AUTOSPORT felt it was the right moment to pick out his greatest races.

So, here are the 10 events we reckon showcase his talents, including the race he picked as his best.

Silverstone BRITISH F3 1994
Paul Stewart Dallara-Mugen Honda

In 1993 Paul Stewart Racing won the British F3 title with Kelvin Burt, while Franchitti topped the Formula Vauxhall Championship. It seemed like a perfect match heading into 1994.

The first round of that year's British F3 campaign did indeed suggest the combination would be formidable, Franchitti qualifying on pole by a tenth as team-mate Jan Magnussen crashed at Copse.

Dario's getaway wasn't the best, but nor was fellow front-row starter Scott Lakin's. The subsequent bunching behind allowed Franchitti to escape, as did Lakin, Magnussen and Gareth Rees.

Lakin soon emerged in second, but couldn't catch Franchitti, who came home over two seconds clear.

"At one stage I thought Scott might be catching me and I got a bit excited," said Franchitti at the time. "I had to do a bit of yoga in the car to calm myself down, and I had a bit of a fright halfway through.

"I was pushing for fastest lap and hit the same bump at Copse that caught Jan out. The car took off and went wide, but it was alright.

"The season gets more difficult from here."

Franchitti wasn't wrong. Magnussen would win next time out at Donington Park and go on to a record-breaking 14 victories. Dario wouldn't win again, but on that day at Silverstone he'd been untouchable.

Suzuka ITC 1996
AMG Mercedes

Franchitti made sure the shortlived but spectacular International Touring Car Championship went out on a high by producing one of the series' greatest drives in its last ever event.

Only ninth on the grid for race one at Suzuka, he quickly hacked through to third with a string of incisive passing moves into Spoon.

Team-mate Bernd Schneider then let him through to attack Alfa Romeo's Christian Danner, and there was no holding Franchitti back as he took to the pitlane entry and shouldered the Alfa aside into the chicane on the penultimate lap.

"Afterwards, Norbert Haug and Alfa's Ninni Russo got into a shouting and pushing match," recalled Franchitti, who later picked the event as his greatest race. "But I was totally within my rights to make that move. He was blocking; I took exception to it!"

Gateway CART 1997
Hogan Reynard-Mercedes

Twenty-second in the championship with a solitary ninth place as a statistical highlight did Franchitti's maiden US season with the small Hogan team a major disservice. He had speed in abundance - the problem was carrying that pace to the finish without crashes, failures or pitstop miscues intervening.

His best shot at a win came in just the fourth oval race of his career. A frontrunner throughout at Gateway, he pitted just before the race went back to green, following a long yellow for drizzle, and that allowed Franchitti to vault to the lead as everyone else stopped.

Once ahead, he had the speed to pull away, until his transmission broke on lap 210 of 236. He stayed sanguine, saying "at least we showed what we were capable of".

Houston CART 1998
Team Green Reynard-Honda

After several more near-misses, Franchitti notched up his first win at Road America in 1998, then hunted down and passed Michael Andretti to triumph again in Vancouver a month later.

But it was surviving up front for all 70 laps of a wet and truncated Houston race that was the hardest-earned win.

As driver after driver crashed out on the slippery streets, Franchitti handled the string of yellows, a red flag, lightning, switches to slicks and back to wets, and an assault from team-mate Paul Tracy (who then had a confrontation in the pits with their boss Barry Green) to lead from flag to flag.

Cleveland CART 2001
Team Green Reynard-Honda

Everyone remembers Alex Zanardi's back-to-front charges, but Franchitti added a turnaround of his own to that canon when he won at Cleveland despite a first-corner tangle dropping him to last.

Stretching his fuel load so he only had to make two pitstops on a day when most pitted three times was key. He won a battle with Bryan Herta, using a similar tactic, when the American spun, but in the closing laps he had three-stopper Memo Gidley bearing down on him with fresh tyres and fuel to burn.

"I felt as if I was back in my Formula Vauxhall days, driving home from races on the M6," said Franchitti, whose win ended a drought stretching back to the penultimate race of 1999. "I had to pay for my own petrol, so I learned how to drive economically..."

Rockingham CART 2002
Team Green Lola-Honda

Over five years after that Gateway disappointment, Franchitti was still hunting for his first oval win.

Fittingly, it came on home ground as Britain's Rockingham oval made its last appearance on an American series calendar.

Stalling in the pits meant he fell as low as 16th, but going out of sequence and getting enough clear air to set some fastest laps meant he still led into the final stint, helped by main rival Kenny Brack having a pit disaster of his own.

Pikes Peak IRL 2003
Andretti Green Dallara-Honda IR-03

A fourth place at a weird little track in Colorado might seem an odd inclusion for someone with a highlight reel as long as Franchitti's, but the 2003 Pikes Peak race stands as both a relic of what might have been and a harbinger of what was to come.

A motorcycle accident had derailed the opening to his first year in the IRL, and he was still suffering discomfort from spinal injuries when he made his comeback at this low-grip one-miler.

Nevertheless, he ran strongly all afternoon on his way to fourth, and stayed in the Andretti Green Racing car to test at Kansas the following week before deciding to undergo surgery that would rule him out of the rest of the year.

Twelve months later, he returned to Pikes Peak and won.

Daytona 24 Hours GRAND-AM 2008
Ganassi Riley-Lexus

On paper, wins don't look much easier than this. Franchitti teamed up with Juan Pablo Montoya, Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas to lead 252 of the 695 laps that they completed to win by two laps.

But while not much went wrong for the Ganassi team during the 24 hours of racing, Franchitti still had the responsibility for carrying the car through what he later described as a "pretty interesting" wet night stint.

The Daytona win is also notable for rounding off an achievement that is uniquely Franchitti's - two other drivers (Mario Andretti and AJ Foyt) have won IndyCar titles, Indy 500s and the Daytona 24 Hours, but only Franchitti won all three within the space of 12 months.

Indianapolis 500 INDYCAR 2012
Ganassi Dallara-Honda

Having three Indy 500s to choose from is a rare luxury, but Franchitti's third victory at the Brickyard was his most dramatic. The first was shortened by rain, the second was under yellows as the result of Mike Conway's huge accident, but Indy 2012 went right down to the wire.

Several drivers had cycled through the lead during a frenetic final stint, and when Franchitti skipped past team-mate Scott Dixon on lap 199, an opportunistic Takuma Sato followed him through.

The Japanese driver lunged down Franchitti's inside going into Turn 1 on the last lap, spun, and very nearly collected the Scot on his way into the outside wall.

The victory would be the last of Franchitti's career, and his only win in the DW12 chassis.

Toronto (Sunday race) INDYCAR 2013
Ganassi Dallara-Honda

Once again, a fourth-place result beats out any number of Franchitti's wins to make this list. The 2013 season was a frustrating one for the Scot, but any questions over whether the fire still burned in the 40-year-old can be answered simply by watching a video of this race.

Contact with Helio Castroneves in the first corner forced Franchitti into the pits to have a new front wing fitted, and when he rejoined, he was dead last.

What followed was remarkable: an afternoon full of qualifying laps, and a lot of overtaking moves that usually only work in video games.

It was the sort of performance that very few drivers could have pulled off, and the kind of afternoon that made you feel that 2013 represented a blip rather than the start of a decline.

Written by Mark Glendenning, Matt Beer and Kevin Turner