Dario, We Hardly Knew Ye….
There’s some good news and a little bit of sad news in NASCAR this week. The good news is David Stremme, as good a driver as any other journeyman on the Sprint Cup circuit- returns to NASCAR’s top level to take over the #12 Dodge vacated by Ryan Newman in 2009. I’m not sure what the story at Chip Ganassi is, but their performance is not matching the talent. It leads one to believe that it’s a matter of inferior equipment or inferior engineering, as opposed to inferior talent. Reed Sorenson, Juan Pablo Montoya and the erstwhile Dario Franchitti (who replaced Stremme) have a track record for winning…until they came to Ganassi. Is it funding? Is it the people? Who knows? I expect no drop off from Newman to Stremme in the #12 ride, though I harbor no high expectations for that ride.
This week we learned Dario Franchitti is giving up his NASCAR experiment to return to IRL racing. It’s a bummer, I actually thought he would have the most upside of any of the former open wheelers. Franchitti was coming off a tremendous championship run in Indy car racing in 2007, full of confidence and an attitude for learning. Unfortunstely, the Scot has had one mishap after another, including a broken foot from a Nationwide incident early this season.
In watching the demise of Franchitti and fellow former open wheeler Jacques Villenueve, you get the feeling that ownershpi expected too much, too soon. It seems Franchitti, Villenueve, and Patrick Carpentier (whom we watch with nervous anticipation) have faced a perfect storm of high expectations, great anticipation, nervous sponsors needing quick results and teams unable to sustain the driver’s development if he sputtered out of the gate. Instead of a Joey Logano-like coming out, they were more like Casey Atwood.
Many old school fans frowned on the presence of the foreign invasion into the Great American racing sport, I always felt that these guy would expand the sport and provide a good debate as we watched them go head-to-head with stock car racing’s best. It does make one wonder how it would go if Kyle Busch actually went to F-1 racing. I get the feeling we would see the likes of Franchitti and Sam Hornish weren’t inferior after all.
We wish you well, Dario. I’ll be rooting for ya in my occasional forays into Indy Car racing.
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:33 pm
I think it’s too bad that Franchitti is leaving NASCAR. He showed potential that, given time and equipment, could have given him a brilliant career in NASCAR. I will miss Ashley, too.
I agree that Ganassi has something wrong with the organization. They have had their share of competent and competitive drivers, but have shown nothing for results.
The Casey Atwood comparison is fairly accurate as well, in my opinion.
I think Gillett will come up with a Canadian sponsor for Carpentier, and GEM will field four cars next year.