The $1.5m winner’s cheque out of a total prize fund of $18,689,238 will not be uppermost in Dario Franchitti’s mind when he starts today’s Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway in Florida. For the 34-year-old Scot, the simple objective will be a solid first race in NASCAR, having made the transition from driving the high-tech open wheel cars of IndyCar to stock cars, which are bulkier and harder to handle.

“It’s a bit more physical than I’m used to in an Indy car,” he acknowledged after crashing out of the Sprint Cup Gatorade Duel on Thursday when his car collided with former Formula One world champion Jacques Villeneuve, who failed to qualify for today’s season opener. “I’m not coming in here saying, ‘This is my first race and I’m going to win it.’ I understand how difficult it’s going to be but, equally, I’m coming into this with the idea of being successful, too.”

Last year Franchitti became IndyCar Series champion, winning four races including the Indianapolis 500, one of the most renowned in motorsport. It was the culmination of five years with the Andretti Green team and he felt that the time was right to make his move into NASCAR in which races draw five times as many TV viewers in America as events on the IndyCar circuit. TV viewing figures for the Daytona 500 (which reached a peak in 2006 when 36.7 million Americans watched at least some of the race) consistently exceed those generated by the Kentucky Derby and the National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals, justifying its reputation as ‘The Great American Race’. Only the Super Bowl and big gridiron games such as the clash of the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts last season attract a larger sports audience in the United States. Out of all of NASCAR’s 35 races, the Daytona 500 is the most financially lucrative and the most prestigious.

Franchitti has become accustomed to the oval circuits in American racing but the handling of his Dodge Avenger for Chip Ganassi Racing will take some getting used to, for stock car drivers need to be constantly on the edge of losing control to get the most out of their vehicles. “What I didn’t expect was how different the car would feel on a track I know, just how different that was going to be,” said Franchitti. “With an Indy car, I kind of knew enough about it to help my engineer just pinpoint the car exactly where we needed to be in the setup for a race. Certainly, with this car and my limited experience, I’m not able to give [crew chief] Steve Lane enough information yet to get the car to that point.

“There’s another part of me, in talking to other people, which says, ‘You’ll never get the car to that point,’ because with these cars there’s always a compromise and it’s a case of getting used to driving the car with that compromise, whether it’s a little too loose or a little bit too tight. Just getting used to driving around those problems is all new to me.”

During this first season in NASCAR, Franchitti may have to lean on team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya, the Colombian former F1 driver who finished 20th last season to gain Sprint Cup Rookie of the Year honours. “Dario has driven ovals the last few years and that should make [the transition] more comfortable for him,” Montoya said. “But he’s driven so much in the different car that he’s so used to different feelings he doesn’t have [in NASCAR]. It’s going to take him a little longer for some things.”

Franchitti finished 10th in his first race of the week, the ARCA RE/MAX Series Daytona 200, a result which would have been better had he not been hit by another car as he was exiting the pits on lap 24. “It really hurt the handling of the car and I was skating around after that all the way to the finish,” he said.

The man to stop today will be Californian Jimmie Johnson, the NASCAR Sprint Cup champion for the past couple of years who will start his title defence in pole position, with Hendrick Motorpsorts team-mate Dale Earnhardt Jr in second place on the grid. Three successive championships has been accomplished only once before in NASCAR history but Johnson dominated last season with 10 victories, increasing his winnings to $31.3m in two seasons. “It’s going to be a very competitive year and a driver like Dario Franchitti coming into the series only underlines this,” Johnson said.

There will be Hollywood glamour at trackside, too, as actress Ashley Judd is a committed supporter of her husband’s racing career. “It is difficult to overstate how proud I am of my husband,” she wrote of Franchitti in an email to USA Today this week. “His willingness to chuck everything he knew – and at which he excelled at the highest level - for something totally new and unknown, I think he is utterly courageous. How many of us have that type of humility and adventuresome spirit?”

For Franchitti to do well will be a formidable challenge. “I’m doing something completely different and I never really thought that I’d get this chance to learn something completely new,” he confessed. “In open-wheel [racing] I achieved more than I ever thought I would but the challenge of coming to race in NASCAR really excites me. Indy and Daytona are the biggest races in their respective series and both are world famous. I know what it feels like to win one of them and at some point I’d like to know what it feels like to win the other.”

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