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Column: Franchitti's disappointment

Having missed a lot of pre-season testing while he recovered from his crash, Autosport.com columnist Dario Franchitti had a lot to endure in the opening round of the CART FedEx World Series at Miami, but it wasn't his leg that was hurting, as he tells us.

So the season has started, but that wasn't really the start that we wanted. From the first session at Miami on Friday we knew we were struggling - there's no other word for it. Although to score points is a bit of a bonus considering the situation we found ourselves in.

We were chasing bad handling all weekend, and we tried a lot of different set-ups, both Paul and myself. Friday and Saturday the car was the worst I've ever felt it. It wasn't a little problem, it was huge. It's been difficult getting used to working with the new engineers, and we're still getting used to that. They're good guys, we're just learning our language and our way of working together. It takes a while. We were all working really hard, all weekend. We were absolutely flat out trying to get the thing to work. And when you're driving a car that's handling like that it's no fun at all.

We went back to basics for the warm-up and ended up with the handling a bit more like we wanted, a bit more like what we're used to. The car was fine on its own in the race, and I was running almost as quick as the leaders. But it was in traffic where I was losing all my time. Every time I got behind a slower car it was just taking me a long time to get by. Eventually the leaders caught me and put me a lap down. When you get a lap down, unless your car's really good, you're not going to do anything.

It was really frustrating. Fighting really hard for 11th place is not what it's all about for me. The high points were the pit-stops from the team which were just brilliant.

And also my team mate drove a brilliant race - his car wasn't good either. It's amazing that he could have won. Max Papis said that while he was chasing him, Paul was taking huge risks every lap. He was lucky in the fact that he got to run in clear air, but you saw what happened when he got to traffic - everybody just shot past him. And that's not his fault. He deserves a lot of praise for the way he drove. Paul described his car as "no better than a tenth place car", so third is a great result.

It was good to see Max win, I spoke to him shortly after the race. He's really happy. I got to stand with the photographers while he was on the podium, and slipped him a few hand gestures, like you do! It was good to see him win it, although I told him not to get used to it - I'm coming after him. But we'll let him have this one!

It was very busy all weekend at Homestead. Of course there were a lot of people I hadn't seen since my accident and everyone was asking how I was. Physically I had absolutely no problems all weekend. The only time I noticed it was during a pit stop when the car came off the jacks quite hard. That reminded me! But other than that I had no problem at all. The only pain I had was when I looked at the time sheets.

I flew straight to LA after the race, and I'm just going to carry on working on building up the muscles in my left leg ready for Long Beach. I didn't have the biggest legs in the world anyway, but my left leg looks really puny now...

Then we go to Nazareth in two weeks. When we tested there the balance was pretty good. Paul was pretty quick, and I was just getting back into the groove, but it was reasonably good, I'm quite happy with that.

I'm not giving up though, no way. It's just difficult when you are used to running up near the front. I think we can get back in there. It's only one race, and there's plenty more yet. I have total faith in the guys at Team Kool Green. They know what it takes to win, and, like me, they'll give everything to make that happen.

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