Brits on Pole

It’s alright for some - while several IndyCar teams struggle for sponsorship or dream in vain of adding a second car, Chip Ganassi would apparently only need to snap his fingers to put Dario Franchitti into a funded race seat.

Dario Franchitti’s debut NASCAR Sprint Cup campaign, already disrupted by poor results, broken bones and failures to qualify for races, is now over for good after team owner Chip Ganassi shut him down due to lack of sponsorship.

NASCAR driver Dario Franchitti suffered a fractured ankle after a blown tyre sent him into the path of another car during a Nationwide Series race in Alabama.

Seven British drivers lined up for the start of the American open wheel season last year, the final campaign to see the sport split between IndyCar and Champ Car. Now, with the first unified season on the horizon, we look at their prospects for 2008.

IndyCar’s 2007 series winner Dario Franchitti has won an award celebrating his time in the sport. Franchitti, who won the 2007 Indianapolis 500 and is about to start a new career as a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver, was honoured alongside 14 other racing heroes at the American Automobile Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association annual get-together in Indianapolis.

The top one may have eluded him - Lewis Hamilton’s had no need to go out and buy a nice big sideboard on which to display his Drivers’ Championship silverware just yet. But still the awards keep rolling in.

Had you been thinking that it really was time that Lewis Hamilton got a bit more publicity and recognition? Or perhaps you reckon Jenson Button really has been under-appreciated this year, or that David Coulthard could do with a bit of glory after a career as arguably the most successful British F1 driver de nos jours.

Dario Franchitti is finding the stripped-down driving of NASCAR a rude awakening compared with life in the telemetry-rich IndyCar series where he was champion last season.

Scotland’s Dario Franchitti won the PEAK Antifreeze Indy 300 - and with it the IndyCar series championship - when his closest rival Scott Dixon ran out of fuel with victory in his grasp.

IndyCar fans could be about to lose a British driver to another series with an announcement expected that Dario Franchitti will be moving across to NASCAR.