Franchitti furious over pit confusion

The Scot had a poor qualifying session that landed him 19th on the grid for Sunday's contest. But by stretching his fuel three or four laps longer than the leaders, Dario emerged from the final round of pit stops in seventh place only to be demoted to the back of the field as a penalty for entering a closed pit lane.

But the Scot had no choice because the pace car was unable to locate the leader on the race track to control the field, delaying the opening of the pits. Dario recovered to finish ninth and salvage some championship points, but he was very unhappy with the situation.

"I'm obviously disappointed with the result of the race," he said. "The car was actually quite good and we made up as many places as we could through passing. And we thought we were going to make up even more places the way the yellows fell. But it took CART something like four laps under the yellow to pick up the leader and dispatch the pace car, which as far I'm concerned isn't acceptable.

"I'm sure that everyone in the stands knew who the leader was, so I just don't understand why they couldn't figure it out. We were running low on fuel and had to come to the pits while they were still closed, so we were penalised and had to go to the back of the field, which basically screwed our race."