He has a bank balance to make Lewis Hamilton blink, a Hollywood star for a wife and he has just won what is claimed to be the world’s biggest motor race. Dario Franchitti was hardly at the forefront of the minds of the tens of thousands who thronged the Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday.

But while Hamilton was denied his glorious victory and Jenson Button and David Coulthard faded from the view of millions of television spectators, Franchitti was preparing to carve out his own slice of motor-racing history on the other side of the Atlantic.

The man from Bathgate in Edinburgh, who grew up in motor racing alongside Coulthard and was mentored by Sir Jackie Stewart, won the fabled Indianapolis 500 to establish something of a British tradition. Dan Wheldon, from Emberton, near Milton Keynes, won two years ago but, more significantly for Franchitti, he became the second Scot to drink the traditional victor’s milk. Jim Clark, one of the finest of drivers and a two-times Formula One world champion, won the same race in 1965.

The victory came even though Franchitti had toyed with quitting motor racing before the start of the season. But he battled through interruptions from heavy rain, a burst tyre and a spectacular multi-car crash that ended Wheldon’s challenge. “I don’t see me quitting any time soon now,” Franchitti said. “I wasn’t sure how much more I wanted to do but my motivation came back stronger than ever.”

Oddly, his achievement hardly merits a mention on this side of the Atlantic and Franchitti is one of a growing band of unsung heroes who are household names in the United States but who would not be recognised in the street here. Wheldon is virtually unknown in his own home village yet commands seven-figure sponsorship deals. Franchitti is just as successful and even more high profile, thought to be worth more than £20 million, including around £3 million in winnings in just five years in the Indy Racing League.

But he is better known to the American public as Mr Ashley Judd, husband of one of the most beautiful actresses in America. The couple, who married in 2001, are not typically Hollywood, though; he is quiet and thoughtful, she something of an intellectual with a degree in French. They attempt to stay out of the public eye, living on a ranch just outside Nashville in Tennessee, commuting to their £3 million stately home, Rednock Castle in Perthshire, in the motor racing off-season. They enjoy the trappings of their success, with Franchitti often flying himself to races in his helicopter, while he has a collection of vintage Ferraris. But he remains one of the most grounded men in motor racing, steeped in the traditions of the sport. He is close to Stewart, whose son, Paul, brought both Franchitti and Coulthard through the junior ranks. Coulthard went on to Formula One but Franchitti was never offered the chance, eventually veering off to the United States and its Champ Car series.

He is 34 now and Formula One will remain an unfulfilled ambition, but at least he has followed in the tyre tracks of Clark to win the US’s biggest and most historic race. Franchitti has a room dedicated to, arguably, Britain’s greatest driver, decorated in the exact blue of Clark’s distinctive racing helmet and complete with a replica model of the Lotus in which Clark won the Indy 500.

He also confessed yesterday to another source of inspiration: the Celtic side that won the 1967 European Cup. Franchitti has become obsessed by the story of the team, who all came from within 30 miles of Glasgow, to such an extent that he is a Celtic season ticket-holder, even though he lives most of the time thousand of miles away. Before the Indy 500 race, he watched film of that night when the famous Lisbon Lions won their cup and told his Andretti Green Racing team: “If that can’t inspire me, nothing will.” It clearly did.

Fast-tracked: from go-karts to the Indianapolis 500

— Dario Franchitti started in go-karts as a child, winning the Scottish junior championship at 11, before progressing through the ranks to be groomed at Paul Stewart Racing, run by Sir Jackie Stewart’s eldest son. Franchitti tied on points in 1999 for the Champ Cars championship with Juan Pablo Montoya, who went on to become a leading Formula One driver. Montoya took the title because he had won seven races to Franchitt’s three.

— Franchitti is third in this year’s IRL championship behind Dan Wheldon, another British driver, who won the Indy 500 in 2005, and Scott Dixon, from New Zealand, Wheldon’s teammate and the championship leader. Franchitti’s total winnings this year before Sunday are $315,800 (about £159,000).

— Ashley Judd, the actress who is Franchitti’s wife, was voted among the 20 sexiest women in the world and is the face of Estée Lauder cosmetics.

— Franchitti is a qualified helicopter pilot, often flying himself to races around the US.

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