I knew Dario Franchitti was skilled at driving and dating, but I had no idea he had such a delightfully devilish sense of humor.
Franchitti is the 2007 Indianapolis 500 winner and two-time Indy car racing champion. He came to Phoenix yesterday to be the grand marshal for the third annual Wheels of Wellness classic race car show.
Unfortunately, his wife wasn’t with him. She’d spent Saturday watching a University of Kentucky basketball game at Auburn, Alabama, while Dario was in Indianapolis on business. After the game, she then flew northeast to New York City while Dario was heading southwest across the country. 
By the way, she, Mrs. Franchitti, is Ashley Judd, the actress.
The Wheels of Wellness kicks off Arizona’s classic car auction week with a gathering of 30 or so historic racing cars, all parked on the grounds around an historic downtown Phoenix home that serves as the base for support and educational programs that The Wellness Community Arizona supplies free to cancer patients and their care-givers.
In addition to racing cars, Wheels of Wellness organizers assemble a group of racing drivers for a panel discussion. This year, in addition to Franchitti, the table included Bob Bondurant, Arie Luyendyk, Didier Theys and Darren Law, with another racer, Lyn St. James, serving as moderator. Among them, that group has a world sports car championship, four Indy 500 victories, four overall victories in the 24 Hours of Daytona and several additional national and series championships.
Almost immediately, Franchitti teased Luyendyk about his hair, which is now nicely cropped but which used to be, well, as Franchitti put it, used to be a mullet.
As Indy 500 winners, Franchitti and Luyendyk both have their images engraved on the Borg Warner trophy. Franchitti chided Luyendyk that on the trophy, Luyendyk’s hair is so long that it “looks like a mud flap.”
St. James joined in, noting that when they both were racing at Indy, Luyendyk's hair always was longer than hers.
To be fair, Franchitti made himself the target of his own remarks. He said he’d spent Saturday visiting John Force’s drag racing shop in Indianapolis, checking out Force’s 300-miles-per-hour Funny Cars.
“I’d love to drive one,” Franchitti said, but, he admitted, “I don’t think I have the beans to pull the trigger.”
Franchitti left Indy cars for a while to try stock car racing. Asked what the biggest difference was between the two disciplines, he said it had nothing to do with the racing, but hinted that the dimensions of the cars may have an impact on the drivers. For example, before moving into stock cars, Juan Pablo Montoya also raced Indy cars, which have very snug cockpits. Franchitti indicated that since making the switch, Montoya had put on some weight. Indeed, he added, the biggest challenge for the team for which Franchitti and Montoya will be teammates in the upcoming 24 Hours of Daytona sports car race will be wedging Montoya into the driver’s seat.
Asked about the differences he’s experienced racing for the Andretti-Green and Target Ganassi Indy car teams, Franchitti responded: “I thought Michael [Andretti] likes to win, but Chip [Ganassi] takes it to another level.”
As evidence, he said, after winning the Indy Racing League championship this past season, Ganassi didn’t have a team celebration but a two-day debriefing during which the team went back through the entire season to analyze a pit stop here or a corner there where it might have cut a fraction of a second off a lap time.
The drivers on the Wheels of Wellness each talked about how they got started in racing and how the sport had changed over the years.
Bondurant noted that his first race car, a British Morgan, had a chassis made in part from wood. He also said that to prepare for the Targa Florio race in the 1960s, he went to Sicily two weeks before the event and spent eight hours a day, seven days each week, driving the more than 40-mile, mountain-roads circuit over and over and over again in a passenger car.
When it came Law’s turn, he admitted that he might have an early advantage since, “I didn’t have a wooden car.” He also said that to prepare for his debut last summer in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, he’d simply plugged a racing video game with the Le Mans circuit into his Xbox and practiced driving laps from the comfort of his home.
-- Larry Edsall