ALL SMILES

FRANCHITTI Atlanta If there's anything to be learned from Dario Franchitti's topsy-turvy 2008 season, it's that people should focus on doing something that challenges them and makes them happy.

After winning the 2007 Indianapolis 500 and the Indy Racing League championship, Franchitti said he didn't feel as motivated as he should have been to go straight back into another Indy car season. So he signed with car owner Chip Ganassi to race in NASCAR.

He was making progress in the Sprint Cup and the Nationwide Series when he broke an ankle at Talladega in April. He returned a little more than a month later and was showing even more improvement when Ganassi shut down the Cup team because

of lack of sponsorship. Franchitti continued in the Nationwide Series for a time, then decided to go back to the Indy car circuit, where he'll run next year as a teammate to defending champion Scott Dixon. Last weekend, he entered the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta as a teammate to Scott Sharp and David Brabham in the Patron Highcroft Racing Acura, but Sharp wrecked the car before Franchitti ever took the wheel.

"Obviously it's been an interesting year," Franchitti said. "It's disappointing that the Cup deal didn't go the way we'd hoped. Typical of the way these things normally happen, we were starting to run a lot better just before it got closed down. At Pocono, Michigan and Loudon [New Hampshire] we were running [in the] top 15 in those races. We qualified seventh at Loudon. I was starting to get it, as they say."

It showed in the Nationwide Series, when he won the pole at Watkins Glen and took the outside pole at Bristol and led 87 laps on the high-banked short track.

Even as his Nationwide results were showing dramatic improvement, he began to have renewed interest in Indy car racing, especially after the reunification of the two series — Champ Car and the Indy Racing League — and the addition of road and street courses to the schedule.

"I was talking to my friends who were still racing [Indy cars]," he said. "And watching the Indy 500 from afar, it really started to get into my head again that I wanted to do Indy cars again.

"One of the things I've learned as I've gotten older is that you've got to do what makes you happy, if you can, and that's what I did."

Another open-wheel driver who has had a fling at NASCAR can identify with that. Adrian Fernandez has run 10 Nationwide Series races for Hendrick Motorsports during the past four seasons, but now he's satisfied running sports cars in the American Le Mans Series. He said it's not that openwheel drivers can't run fast in NASCAR cars, it's that it takes time — lots of it — to know all the nuances of the cars and what adjustments must be made to be fast at the end of the 500-mile race.

"It's not about being quick," he said. "In testing, I was as quick as Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch. But it's the whole weekend and the changes that need to be made — thousands of little things."

Rather than spend years perfecting his NASCAR skills, Fernandez opted for the ALMS.

"The ALMS is perfect for me," he said. "I don't fancy making NASCAR my career. I'm satisfied with what I've done. I don't have to prove anything."

Franchitti said that while his focus is on Indy cars and sports cars, he's not ruling out a return to NASCAR at some point in the future.

"Never say never," he said. "I learned that in the last year. It may happen again in the future. I might do it again."

And if he does, he'll be better prepared for the challenge, he said. "If I do it again, I'll know more about what I need from a team going in.

"It's a possibility for the future."