IndyCar’s top driver of the decade did more in less time

By Asher Fair | Jan 31, 2020

SONOMA, CA - AUGUST 25: Dario Franchitti of Scotland driver of the #10 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Dallara Honda leads teammate Scott Dixon driver of the #9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Dallara Honda for the IZOD IndyCar Series GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma on August 25, 2013 at Sonoma Raceway in Sonoma, California. (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images) /

Who was IndyCar’s top driver of the 2010s decade? A case could be made for several drivers, but one stands out. That driver competed for not even four years.

When you take a look at the wins list from the 2010s decade of IndyCar competition, which came to an end in September at Laguna Seca with Colton Herta scoring his second career win and Josef Newgarden winning his second championship, it looks like, on paper, the battle for the driver of the decade is between Scott Dixon and Will Power.

They are the only two drivers who won more than 15 of the 169 races that were contested this decade. Power, who missed just one start with a concussion back in 2016, heads the list with 33 ahead of Dixon with 24, but Dixon won three championships while Power only won one. Power did also win the 2018 Indianapolis 500.

But one driver, one who didn’t even crack the top five on the wins list, stands out as the decade’s true top driver.

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He only competed for four seasons of the decade.

But how many drivers actually competed throughout the entire decade?

On a full-time basis, only six — Power (33 wins), Dixon (24), Ryan Hunter-Reay (15), Takuma Sato (5), Tony Kanaan (3) and Marco Andretti (1).

So to rule out a driver who didn’t compete every year, or even most years, would be almost like disqualifying Ayrton Senna from the greatest of all-time Formula 1 debate because his win total isn’t as high as some of the sport’s other legends.

That one driver is Dario Franchitti.

The four-time champion and three-time Indy 500 winner (only A.J. Foyt can say he has more of both) was forced to retire after suffering serious injuries in a late-season crash on the streets of Houston in 2013. But while he didn’t even complete four seasons of the 2010s decade, his performance throws him right up there with Power and Dixon in this debate.

No, Franchitti’s win total of eight this past decade isn’t 24 and it isn’t 33. But given the time we’re talking about here, that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Franchitti won two championships this decade, trailing only Dixon, as he won the titles in 2010 and 2011. He is still the most recent driver to win consecutive titles, and he won three in a row from 2009 to 2011.

He technically won four in a row, as he won the 2007 title before competing in NASCAR instead of IndyCar in 2008 and then coming back to the open-wheel circuit the following year.

He also wasn’t propelled to either one of his two championships via a double points-paying season finale like Dixon was in 2015. I’m certainly not going to delegitimize Dixon’s fourth title and second of the decade, but based on the scoring system used during Franchitti’s day, he and Dixon would be tied atop the 2010s titles list along with Newgarden.

Franchitti also won the Indy 500 twice this decade, winning it in 2010 and 2012, and he is the only driver who can say that in what has been arguably the tightest decade of competition in the history of the Brickyard. In fact, in 2020, we could potentially see a 10th different Indy 500 winner in 10 years.

This hasn’t happened since 1932 — nearly nine decades ago — when there was an 11th consecutive different winner.

Aside of Power and Dixon, the only drivers who won more races than Franchitti in the 2010s decade were Hunter-Reay (15 in 10 seasons), Newgarden (14 in eight seasons) and Simon Pagenaud (14 in eight seasons).

Hunter-Reay and Pagenaud both won one championship and one Indy 500, with Hunter-Reay winning the 2012 title and 2014 Indy 500 and Pagenaud winning the 2016 title and the 2019 Indy 500. Newgarden, as stated above, won two titles.

Other than that, who else is even in this discussion?

Everyone else in the top 12 on the 2010s decade wins list competed in at least eight full-time seasons in the decade except for Alexander Rossi, who won seven races in four years, one shy of Franchitti’s mark. But while he won the 2016 Indy 500, he is still seeking his first championship.

Franchitti’s two wins per year average is also the third best, tied with Herta (two in his rookie year) and trailing only Power (3.3) and Dixon (2.4), despite the fact that he ended his career on a 28-race win drought — over a season and a half in length.

Next. Top 10 IndyCar drivers of all-time. dark

Dario Franchitti may not have competed in an IndyCar race since his career came to an abrupt end on Sunday, October 6, 2013 outside the Astrodome and NRG Stadium on the streets of Houston, Texas. But when you take a look back on the 2010s decade, there still wasn’t a better nor more accomplished driver to represent these 10 years of competition at the highest level of American open-wheel racing.