Monte Burke

new title sponsor (Izod, the clothing company), the first it’s had in eight long years. Between a day-long marathon of interviews and makeup calls, Franchitti decides to take a quick break to indulge in one of his favorite hobbies: flying radio-controlled airplanes.
He eyes the girders that support the roof over the basketball court. "Think I can make it through one of those holes?" he asks me. I have no doubt that he can. The holes are maybe eight feet wide and four feet tall. A few onlookers have paused to watch.
Franchitti revs up the engine of the plane for takeoff. When it’s aloft, he performs a lazy mid-court loop, then noses the plane up and through the crossed beams. The onlookers clap. He brings the plane in for a soft landing, adding a 360-degree turn on the court for good measure.
Franchitti says he started flying toy planes while he was recuperating from a grisly crash in 2000, when he was in the CART series (which later merged with Indy).

"I broke my pelvis and hit my head pretty hard," he says. "My doctor suggested I do something that occupied my brain." So he built his own plane. On its maiden voyage, "I fired it up. It started climbing, then went straight down to the ground like a dart," he says. "That was the end of the first one." Since then, he’s been more inclined to buy them. The soft plastic shells of the non-homemade sort are more resilient. The yellow plane he’s flying today cost $30 at Target.com.