Hindsight? Gotta love it

How I wish I could have a few columns back after writing them. This was my View from America piece for SkySports.com last week BEFORE the Suntrust Indy Challenge at Richmond turned into the greatest borefest in the recent history of motor-sport, a 160mph circular procession of such high tedium that even second-placed Dario Franchitti was forced to apologize to fans for the "awful, awful racing." Here's the awful, awful lack of foresight (made only slightly more palatable - or less so, you could argue - by the 'average roundabout' reference). "Greatest dogfight potential?" I hardly think so:

View from America

US-based British sports-writer Simon Veness highlights the renewed focus on Dario Franchitti in the increasingly dramatic IndyCar series

Jenson Button may be motorsport’s flavour of the month in Europe, but there’s no doubting who is enjoying the lion’s share of the high-octane spotlight here in the US.

Dario Franchitti may have been an afterthought in 2008 following his disastrous dabble with the closed-cockpit world of NASCAR racing, but he has forced his way back into the media’s attention in no uncertain terms in recent weeks.

And, ahead of the weekend’s big showdown in the Suntrust Indy Challenge at Richmond International Raceway (live on SS1 at 12.30am on Sunday), the Flying Scot is front and center for this unique race, which takes place on a circuit only marginally bigger than the average roundabout.

First off, viewers will have to get used to the tight, constricting confines of the shortest course used by any of the big racing leagues. RIR is dubbed ‘America’s Premier Short Track’ and fully deserves that soubriquet. Short? How about three-quarters of a mile (1.2km) from start to finish. The 20 cars will lap at around 166mph, meaning they will cover the full circuit in roughly 20 seconds. At three laps per minute, they could cover the 300-lap distance in just an hour and 40 minutes. And get very, very dizzy in the process.

Indeed, one of Franchitti’s first comments last week after winning the Iowa Corn Indy 250 (on the Iowa Speedway, which is all of seven-eighths of a mile!) was: “I am completely dizzy right now.”

So he had better be ready for an even more extreme experience Saturday night, especially as all races at Richmond are run under lights (and draw huge crowds as a result). It makes for an amazing spectacle, even if all the drivers do need to lie down in a dark room for a while afterwards while the world stops spinning around them.

But it is not the unusual nature of the racing that is uppermost in the media’s minds ahead of round eight of 17 in this year’s IndyCar series so much as Franchitti’s big comeback from the rubble and ruin of his 2008 campaign.

This time last year, the Bathgate racer was still hobbling from the effects of an inadvertent high-speed encounter with Larry Gunselman in a Nationwide Series event at Talladega (Franchitti was T-boned on the driver’s side by Gunselman’s Chevy at roughly 150mph and was fortunate to escape with ‘only’ a broken ankle).

He was preparing for the NASCAR event at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, having endured the kind of season normally suffered only by the most distant also-rans of motorsport (in F1, think Force India, only worse). He had started just 10 races, failed to qualify in two and missed five with his ankle injury. His best finish was a meager 22nd, while his average placing was a miserable 34th.

Just a few days after his forgettable 38th-place at Loudon, his Chip Ganassi Racing team folded through lack of sponsorship, an early victim of the recession that continues to take large bites out of both the NASCAR and IndyCar circuits. And there Dario sat for the rest of the season, a frustrated spectator as – irony of ironies – Chip Ganassi Racing dominated the 2008 Indy series, with Kiwi Scott Dixon claiming the crown he had vacated at the end of the previous year.

Now, however, it is a completely different story as Franchitti basks on the afterglow of his second win of the season (his 10th on the Indy circuit) and sits just three points behind current series leader Ryan Briscoe. In the seven events so far, he has been out of the top 10 only once and he and Dixon have four wins between them for the Target Chip Ganassi team.

The smaller oval circuits haven’t been the happiest of hunting grounds for the Scotsman in the past (his NASCAR experience was definitely the nadir for the left-turn, left-turn, left-turn mentality), but he proved without doubt at Iowa last week there are absolutely no hang-ups from last year, hence most of the pundits make him the favourite for win No.3 this term.

He is certainly a distinctly happier and more easy-going driver than the one who looked a haunted figure at times with the good ol’ boys of the stock car series last season, and it would be another supreme irony if he was to finish in Victory Lane in such a bastion of the NASCAR world.

Of course, the REAL story of this year’s IndyCar series to date is the fact just 57 points separate the top six in the standings, meaning the championship is boiling up nicely (each race winner earns 50 points, while there are 2 bonus points for the driver who leads most laps and an additional point for the pole-sitter, hence every race has a potential 53-point turnaround).

Briscoe and Franchitti (241 and 239 points respectively), sit just ahead of Dixon (226) and Brazilian Indy 500 star Helio Castroneves (212), while swimsuit pin-up Danica Patrick is still a healthy fifth (189) and 2005 champion Dan Wheldon, the other Brit in the championship shake-up is sixth (184).

The next four in the standings – Brazilian Tony Kanaan, American duo Marco Andretti and Graham Rahal, and Japan’s Hideki Mutoh – have also shown themselves to be pretty competitive in recent races, so there are no foregone conclusions for a race that often throws up more than its fair share of surprises.

Seasoned Richmond watchers are quick to point out this ‘bull-ring’ style of racing is not for the faint-hearted, and, of the past seven winners, only one of those, Sam Hornish Jr, is not in the current top seven (mainly because he is trying to ‘do a Dario’ and crack the NASCAR world).

Franchitti himself won here in his championship year of 2007, Castroneves in 2005, Wheldon in ’04 and Dixon the year before that, while Kanaan is the reigning Suntrust title-holder (Hornish Jr won in both 2002 and ’06).

It therefore has arguably the greatest dogfight potential of the season so far. Throw in Patrick, who is increasingly desperate to chalk up a second career win and advance her end-of-year contract potential when her current deal with Andretti Green Racing is up, and you have the formula for some riveting TV.

With the Formula 1 world on a two-week hiatus (if that’s the right word when threats and counter-threats of a breakaway circuit are being thrown around like confetti at the world’s most profligate wedding), it could be the ideal time to tune in to an IndyCar revolution – and see if Super Dario can truly reign supreme.