Hull alerted Chip Ganassi to Franchitti’s availability, and terms were thrashed out over dinner in the team’s hospitality unit on the Saturday evening. By all accounts, the negotiations was quick, but the process stalled when Ganassi attempted to formalize Franchitti’s commitment by having him sign a paper napkin. When Franchitti held firm to his insistence on an actual contract, Ganassi set him a deadline of 7:00 a.m. the following morning to have the finalized paperwork in hand. Franchitti delivered it at 6:30 a.m.

“If you understand Dario time, 6:30 a.m. is not easy,” Hull says. “But that’s how much he wanted to drive for us in IndyCar again. The rest is history. But we never really wavered from what was on that dinner napkin.”

As firm as Franchitti’s intention had been to close the door on IndyCar after 2007, his dedication upon returning was equally unwavering. But that commitment was laced with a certain amount of trepidation.

“I definitely wanted to show that the NASCAR thing was a blip,” he says. “But I was also nervous that I wouldn’t have the level of commitment required, and I wouldn’t be sharp enough to go up against Scott. I rated Scott so highly, and I knew what he was capable of. I felt I was going into ‘his’ team, as it were. I didn’t want to embarrass myself, and I didn’t want to let my team down. And I wasn’t sure how I was going to fit in. That was the mindset going in.”

Franchitti’s impact was immediate. He and Dixon had already developed a friendship to match their rivalry on track – Franchitti’s 2007 championship came at Dixon’s expense – and the pair combined to win 10 of the 17 races on the 2009 calendar, split equally at five victories apiece. The title went down to a three-way battle between the two Ganassi drivers and Team Penske’s Ryan Briscoe, with Franchitti ultimately triumphing in a fuel-mileage contest at the Homestead finale.

Franchitti admits to having had some concerns about going into “Dixon’s team”, but the two immediately established an on-track potency to go with their off-track friendship. Motorsport Images

Championships are inevitably – if disproportionally – characterized by the final round. The following year, Franchitti dominated the Indy 500, then triumphed over Penske’s Will Power in the Homestead season-closer when the Australian hit the barriers while attempting to clear traffic. The scheduled 2011 title decider at Las Vegas was abandoned in the wake of Dan Wheldon’s horrific accident, so we look back to the previous race at Kentucky Speedway, where Power came into the weekend with the points lead, only to be clobbered by Ana Beatriz’s car in pitlane, eliminating the main obstacle standing between Franchitti and another crown.

But the real story was the work done to build toward those defining moments, and the effort required to sustain that appetite for success, season after season.

“I felt [the momentum] as a confidence level,” Franchitti says. “It was a well-oiled machine. And I knew at the time that these things can’t go on forever. So I enjoyed every moment of it, because I knew at some point it would stop. And we had that discussion within the team, too.

“But by the third year, to keep that killer instinct…that’s where the people around me came in, because I don’t care who you are, you can tail off a bit with the success. And that’s where having Chip as a boss really helped; he’s so hungry for wins and championships. From the top down, you had that, ‘OK, we’ve won a couple of championships. It doesn’t matter. Let’s keep pushing.’ And in a period that was so difficult to win in, that’s something we’re very proud of.”

The end of Franchitti’s dominance coincided with the arrival of the new DW12 car for 2012.

“At first I really struggled because – and this is bizarre – IndyCar wouldn’t let us use a braking system where I could right-foot brake,” he says. “Everything had to be spec. I literally had to threaten to retire before they would modify the brake pedal so I could right-foot brake. It was absolutely ridiculous. I smashed up two cars in testing trying to learn to left-foot brake on a road course. That’s when Chip got involved!

“But even without that, right from the beginning, I struggled with the new car. Not with the one-lap pace, because I got a few poles, but the race balance and adapting to the car through a race wasn’t so good.”

He was spared those struggles at the 2012 Indy 500, where he was hit in the pit box, dropped to last, and then fought back to survive a last-lap lunge from Takuma Sato and out-drag Dixon to the finish line for a third drink of milk. It was the final win of his career, which was cut short by his medically-enforced retirement after a shocking crash at Houston in ’13.

Time has given Dario a new perspective on his golden Ganassi era, in part because of what Dixon – now a six-time champ – has done since.

“When I look at Scott’s record now, and what that boy’s achieved, I think, ‘That wasn’t a bad run,’” chuckles Franchitti. “I kept him honest.”