Franchitti misses out at Daytonaposted in MSPOR30 | 01 | 2011
BATHGATE'S DARIO Franchitti had to content himself with second place in the 49th running of the Daytona 24-Hours race. The Scot's Ganassi BMW-Riley Prototype, which led for much of the second-half of the race, eventually finished 2.070secs behind the sister car of Scott Pruett.
"Yeh, it's disappointing not to win again," 37-year-old Franchitti, who won with Ganassi in 2008, said immediately after the race which covered 720 laps of the 3.560-mile Florida track.
"We were comfortably ahead, about 30-seconds, before the late safety car period eroded that advantage; but that's one of the things you have to accept in motor racing.
"The main thing is we got a 1-2 result for Team Ganassi which, when everything's considered, is what we set out to do." The result — sealed by Pruett, Memo Rojas, Graham Rahal and Joey Hand — clinched Ganassi's fourth win in the race in six years.
Triple IndyCar champ and double Indy500 winner Franchitti — co-driven by F1 winner Juan Pablo Montoya, IndyCar champScott Dixon and Jamie McMurray — held off the Porsche-Riley of last year's winner Joao Barbosa by just 0.256secs.
BBC Formula One pundit Martin Brundle, partnered by fellow ex-F1 racer Mark Blundell, finished fourth in their Ford-Riley.
Both Ganassi cars had experienced problems early on. The No1 car of Pruett was delayed at the start of the second hour when the team opted to change the gear cluster because the car was bouncing off the rev-limiter in top gear. Swift work by the crew ensured the pitstop, completed under yellow flags, only dropped the car one lap off the lead.
Franchitti's No2 car dropped two laps when it was forced to pit twice with punctures around the eight-hour mark. The Ganassi crew then opted to bring the car in for the same ratio change as the sister car during a safety car period after seven hours. The car lost more than a lap, but quickly got back on terms with the frontrunners.
There was frustration though for Wishaw's Ryan Dalziel, the winner 12 months ago. The 28-year-old Scot saw any hopes of winning back-to-back Daytona races disappear when his Ford-Riley hit major problems forcing it to retire with five hours remaining.
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Jim McGill