At the end of the 2005 IndyCar season, Dario Franchitti did some soul-searching.

The Scotsman had come back from two serious injuries and won 15 open-wheel races while competing first in CART and then in the rival IndyCar Series. But he was no longer looking forward to getting into the car.

“I wasn’t sure how much more I wanted to do,” said the new Indianapolis 500 winner. “I wasn’t that crazy about racing on ovals and the spark was kind of gone.”

Part of his frustration was finishing sixth at the 2005 Indy race, where he led five times for 15 laps and thought he should have won.

“It was 40 years since Jimmy Clark had won it and Jackie Stewart, my old boss and, obviously, another one of my heroes, came out and watched the race,” Franchitti said, referring to two other Scottish drivers. “It was looking good for a while but, it didn’t turn out and I wasn’t very happy.”

At the end of that season, after Franchitti had closed the year with a victory at California Speedway, he sat down with Andretti Green Racing team owners Michael Andretti, Kim Green and Kevin Savoree to discuss his future.

“I was feeling good about the win, but I wasn’t sure about things,” Franchitti said. “I decided to come back and see what would happen. Then, with the fairly average year we had last year, my motivation came back stronger than ever. I felt it again.”

Franchitti is now the champion of the world’s richest open-wheel event and one of its most prestigious.

“You know, I was still in shock for a while,” Franchitti said the day after winning the rain-shortened Indy 500.

He spent several hours that morning posing with the Borg-Warner Trophy and his winning cars for photos on the track’s main straightaway.

Each winner has his name etched into the trophy and his face emblazoned on it.

“It all kind of made sense when I turned around and looked at the trophy,” Franchitti said.

“I saw some of the names on the trophy and then I was in awe. It’s a humbling experience.”

It all might have slipped away if he had decided to walk away after 2006, a year in which all the AGR drivers struggled while the drivers from Team Penske and Chip Ganassi Racing dueled for most of the wins and the title.

Franchitti knew there was a lot of work ahead if his team was going to become truly competitive again.

But there were two compelling reasons for continuing – best friend and teammate Tony Kanaan and Marco Andretti, the 20-year-old son of the team owner.

“Tony kept telling me the best was still ahead for me and the team,” Franchitti said.

No matter what happens, Franchitti is finally having fun again.

“I couldn’t think of anything that I’d rather be doing now,” he said.