Last weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona was an amazing weekend. Getting to see Porsche take the top three spots in GT was one of my favorite moments, and the rest of 2012 will have to work hard to beat it. As amazing as the race was, my personal favorite moment of the weekend was the “24 minutes of Daytona” on Saturday morning.
The 2012 iteration marked the 50th anniversary of the Floridian endurance race. To commemorate the anniversary, Grand Am and the track worked in tandem to bring back a large contingent of the overall winners from the previous 50 years to compete in a short vintage race event on the high banks of the track.
The car that I immediately gravitated toward was the 1970 victor, a Gulf-Wyer 917 KurzHeck. As it turns out, Dario Franchitti was driving the car in the race, and we got the opportunity to sit down for a few minutes between the 24 minutes and the 24 hour to chat; about the car, the upcoming race, and his season prospects in IndyCar .
9Magazine: Dario, Can you give us a quick impression of how it felt to drive the Gulf 917 in this morning’s 24 Minutes of Daytona vintage event?
Dario Franchitti: Yeah, it was… um, well it was incredible. It’s one of those cars that’s on my short list of cars to drive, so to get to do it here, today at Daytona was very exciting. It’s everything I thought it would be. You know, it’s a lot of…um, a lot of power. It handles quite nicely. Fantastic seating position. You know, I guess it was… Parts of me were very excited, parts of me were terrified. It’s a pretty intimidating car to drive on the banking. There were times where we weren’t hanging around, so the experience just adds to the respect I already had for the people that drove them.
9M: Before the cars went on track, I saw you put your helmet in the car. Was that your way of calling dibs on it, as if to say “This one’s mine”?
DF: No, what happened was, Bruce Canepa, whose car it is, asked me yesterday if I would drive it. So, I asked Chip [Dario’s boss, Mr. Chip Ganassi] last night for permission, and Chip was like “Absolutely, go ahead, man!” You know, and so, that was it. Going to sleep last night, I knew I was going to drive it; I got really excited about it. Now I’ve got to go from that part, having fun, to getting serious about the race.
9M: Alright, well, settle in and get serious. How do you think you are going to do over the next 27 or so hours?
DF: It’s a long way to go, I don’t know. We’ll go out there, we’ll do our best. It’s a fantastic team, we have, I think, the best team in the business, but a lot of things can go wrong. Anything that does, you just have to be prepared to deal with it. Hopefully we, as drivers, won’t make any mistakes. It’s all about getting close at the end and going for it.
9M: How would you rate your chances for another IndyCar championship this year?
DF: [Laughs] Uh, who knows? For sure it’s not going to be easy, but that’s what we’re here for.
9M: Well, we appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. I wish best of luck to you, here at Daytona, as well as the remainder of the season.
Photos: Brad Brownell
