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Franchitti relishing new challenge

Dario Franchitti is relishing his new career challenge after announcing today that he will be moving full-time to race in NASCAR for Chip Ganassi Racing

The current IRL and Indy 500 champion will turn his back on more than ten years of open-wheel racing to follow the path of former Champ Car rival and future NASCAR Sprint Cup teammate Juan Pablo Montoya.

The newly-signed Ganassi driver expects the move to be a tough one as it has proved to be for Montoya this year.

"I've had 11 great years in open-wheel racing," Franchitti said while being introduced at Chip Ganassi's headquarters Wednesday. "The time came for a new challenge. And this is it. It's going to be a heck of a challenge to learn everything.

"I'm sitting here just now with an experience of zero, and I'm going to be relying a lot on my new teammates. I've already started quizzing Juan this morning."

Franchitti said it was a difficult decision for him choosing not to defend his Indy 500 win next year, as it will be impossible for him to make the race in 2008 due to conflicting schedules with his Sprint Cup commitments.

"When I weighed out the pros and cons of making this move, not defending the 500 win was tough because it meant so much to me," Franchitti added. "That was one of the hardest parts of making the decision. Winning the 500 was a special feeling."

The Scot admitted that his two flips in the last few races in the IRL this year played a role in his decision to quit the series and move to NASCAR. He also said that achieving his goals in the IRL made his decision to switch much easier.

"I'd be lying if I said [the flips] were not [a factor in the decision]. It definitely was a small part of the decision," Franchitti said. "But there is a lot more to it than that. I've been intrigued by the challenge of NASCAR for quite a while, and that was the overriding decision.

"Winning the Indy 500 and the championship just made that decision easier because I achieved what I wanted to achieve."

Franchitti is following not only in the footsteps of Juan Pablo Montoya while switching from open-wheel racing to NASCAR. He is the second IRL and Indy 500 champion to leave the series as Sam Hornish Jr is also making the move this year, although he has already failed to qualify twice for Nextel Cup races.

"I talked to Sam a little bit," Franchitti said. "I was surprised that he has failed to qualify because he is a hell of a driver. That's one of those points where I look at what I'm about to do, and I realize the task ahead of me and how difficult this is going to be."

"I'm going to take it one race at a time. I've just got to try to win that first [NASCAR] race. Just to do that will be hugely difficult."

The 34-year-old will attempt to make his stock car debut this weekend at Talladega Superspeedway in an ARCA race, where he will likely race against former Formula One driver Scott Speed.

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