"I still felt I wanted to race" - When Dario Franchitti spoke about the crash that ended his time in IndyCar

4-time IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti's career abruptly ended in 2013. Instead of getting to bow out of racing the way he would have liked, a horrific crash in that year's Grand Prix of Houston forced him to retire.

In the final lap of the race, his car made contact with Takuma Sato's car during a wheel-to-wheel battle. Franchitti's No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing car went flying into the catchfence before spinning multiple times and stopping in the middle of the track. A large amount of debris also flew into the grandstands, injuring 13 spectators. Franchitti was rushed to the Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston, having suffered a broken right ankle, two broken vertebrae, and a concussion.

The concussion also led to him lose five weeks of memory before the crash and including it. In 2014, Franchitti sat down with American journalist Graham Bensinger, where he expressed how miserable he felt dealing with premature retirement.

"I still felt I wanted to race," the British driver said. "I wanted to see if there was any way I could do it. I said, 'Okay well, can I do something else?' No. The answer came by the same every time. So that was it."

Franchitti won four IndyCar championships in 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2012, and hung up his boots as a 3-time winner of the Indy500.

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Dario Franchitti considered retiring a year before the career-ending crash

United States - IZOD IndyCar Series - Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach - Source: Getty

Dario Franchitti was one of IndyCar's highly regarded racers. His sheer will to win races and championships even in the twilight of his career defined his greatness. Scott Dixon, who was Franchitti's teammate at Chip Ganassi Racing, hailed him as an "extremely competitive person."

Even after the British driver won his fourth IndyCar championship in 2012, aged 39, he looked far from slowing down. However, mentally, his drive to race in IndyCar waned. In April 2024, Franchitti explained the retirement thoughts that were running in his head after winning the championship that year.

"There weren’t thoughts of retiring from racing. But there were thoughts of retiring from IndyCar," Dario Franchitti told Motor Sport Magazine. "We’d had that incredibly successful period from ’09 to 2012 with two [Indy] 500 wins and three championships. But I could feel my motivation just trailing off. And that’s very important to me. A lot of my commitment, my speed came from having that motivation. I didn’t want to be the weak link in the chain."

After his crash, Dario Franchitti explored other avenues within motorsport, including media and interviews. He then branched into commentating, becoming one of Formula E's official TV commentators since its inaugural season in 2014.