Interview: Dario Franchitti

Dario Franchitti drums his fingers on the table and tries to recall what he does when he is not working. "I like relaxing," he says in a Scottish burr, "water-skiing on a loch, or playing with toys like bikes and helicopters."

Franchitti was the eighth highest-paid British sportsman in 2001, nestling between Michael Owen and Darren Clarke, with earnings of £4.5m - £500,000 more than his formula one counterpart David Coulthard. He lives in secluded luxury in Nashville and trots along to the Oscars on the arm of his film star wife Ashley Judd.

But as he sits in a London restaurant, a big flesh-coloured sticking plaster on his chin (the legacy of a shaving accident that morning), not one person even glances in his direction.

Why? Because his fame and fortune has come from driving cars around symmetrical ovals in North America. Because he is a resident of that invisible place where the ageing Nigel Mansell disappeared to after formula one: the competitive world of Cart racing.

Franchitti has always loved cars. His grandfather and grandmother were obsessed by them, his dad raced for a hobby and he himself grew up in Edinburgh hero-worshipping Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart and Ayrton Senna. He drove formula three here before going to Germany and racing touring cars for Mercedes for two years. Then, in 1997, he went over to the States and started to drive Cart. Since joining Team Kool Green in 1998 he has earned nine wins and 11 poles, and is considered, at 29, one of the hottest drivers on the circuit.

He is also a man with a mission. On September 14, Cart crosses the Atlantic to Rockingham, Northamptonshire. There, in front of a full house of British fans, Franchitti wants to win and give his sport the publicity boost he thinks it deserves in a country with only one real motor love: formula one.

Franchitti goes to Rockingham, for the 15th round of the year, in third place overall and with two wins under his belt. The drivers first flew across the Atlantic to Rockingham in 2001, just after September 11, as Cart spread its ever octopussing arms. There are also races in Germany, Australia, Japan and Mexico.

The race started four hours late on a track regarded as a joke. It is built over a reclaimed iron-ore mine and after days of heavy rain before the race it was swamped. Practice was washed out on the Thursday and Friday and in desperation engineers drilled 4,000 holes in the surface of the track to drain it. However, in front of a crowd of 38,000, a shortened race was eventually run and was seen by the fans at least as a triumph.

"Cart is not as sanitised as formula one," Franchitti says. "You just get in the car and get on with it. And it is more fun.

"The drivers all generally get on very well together and I don't think you'll find that in formula one. That's not to say we all don't want to beat each other, but when we finish we go and hang out. You don't have to hate the guy to want to beat him.

"Also, unlike formula one, our paddocks are open so all the fans can come in, talk and look at the cars. It can get a bit overpowering at times, because people in the paddock don't understand that every minute of my day is accounted for, but it is a lot more hands-on and a lot more fan-friendly."

Formula one crops up a lot in his conversation. He must think about giving it a go - he will probably have to, if he wants to be properly recognised at home.

"Ah, the infamous formula one question, the one I always get asked whenever I come back to the UK. I would very much like to do it but, unlike most other sports, you have got to have the equipment to do the job. It is not an equal sport - the best driver does not always win.

"I would like to put myself in the best position possible to win which means going with the best team possible, and up until this point I haven't had that."

But in a way Franchitti has no need of formula one. He already has the best of everything - the money, the girl and the lifestyle - but none of the attendant hassles. Even in America he can walk around without anyone giving him a second look, apart from to ogle the woman on his arm.

And so far he seems to have escaped most of fame's more unpleasant bruises. He is polite and patient. As he sits, a work experience photographer nervously fiddles with his camera, asking for just one more shot. Franchitti does not even raise one of his distinctively bushy eyebrows.

Only his slightly distracted sang froid , his expensive clothes, his careful study of the menu for fat percentages and his surprisingly large arms bulging out of his T-shirt mark him out as a sportsman.

"It's a big misconception that racing drivers aren't fit," he says. "My trainer, who used to be a professional triathlete, equates the fitness level of the drivers to triathletes.

"When the car is producing something between four to five g's through a corner you've got to be able to control it. Your whole body has to be able to stand these loads, your neck, every part. When your head is four times its weight all of a sudden, it feels like someone is trying to pull it off your shoulder. It's tough."

It is also monotonous, at least to the untrained eye. Doesn't it get boring driving round and round at 200mph?

"Your mind is processing so many things all the time, you don't have time to get bored. You're feeling what the car is doing. If you've been in a car when it is sliding around a bit, it feels like that but you're at the limit of the car. You're feeling what the car is doing, you're focusing on where you're braking, your positioning in the car, how the strategy of the race is running, how the tyres are wearing. You're just constantly processing all the different things that are going on in your small world."

The small world is a very dangerous world. Alex Zanardi lost his legs in a horrible accident the week before Rockingham last year and Franchitti's best friend, Greg Moore, was killed in 1999.

Death is a distinct possibility every time he goes to work. Does he think about it?

"I think anyone who says they don't is lying. It is when you think about it and how you react that matters. You have to know your limits and sometimes there's a certain limit you go to and think OK, that's it.

"When Greg died that made me think, did I want it anymore? And I thought 'Yes I do'. You think about the dangers, you accept them and you go about your job, it is only if you start to think about it too much in the car that you'd have a problem.

"The danger factor is something you deal with and the driver's family deals with, whether it is Ashley, who since the day we met has known about it, or my grandparents."

If there is a sort of selfishness in putting your family through that, Franchitti also knows what it feels like as his younger brother drives cars too. "He races long-distance and I worry about him much more than I do about myself, for sure."

But if he has come to terms with death, it is another thing altogether coming to terms with Hollywood.

"It's funny. I mean, I go to the Oscars and you see all these people you've seen before on TV. But it is the same as any kind of world, there are good people and bad people. I found America a bit overpowering at first - everything was so in-your-face and the people over the top, but I got used to it.

"But I do get very homesick and I'd like to come back one day. I know I'm not stuck there in the rain and the hail but on a nice summer's day there is nowhere like Scotland. I certainly don't want to get an American accent or a mid-Atlantic drawl. Please shoot me first."

His old mates back home in Edinburgh and his Italian mum and dad must find it fairly amusing that he is married to an American movie star and spends his spare time hanging around film sets?

"No, not really - because they know Ashley as Ashley, the girl who will make them breakfast in the morning if they come and stay.

"She has only missed two races in the last year, it is difficult when she is filming, but she tries to come to as many as she can. She loves racing now, but before she met me she absolutely did not. She saw it as taking TV time away from basketball, which she is absolutely passionate about."

At the moment Franchitti's future is uncertain. His present team contract runs out at the end of this season, but he still enjoys racing. Maybe a win at Rockingham will turn him into a big British star. Maybe he will soon be sitting at the celebrity tabloid high table with the Beckhams.

"No, I'm quite happy thank you," he says. "I like my life just the way it is."