Franchitti in good shape for CART title attack

Franchitti, who was training at Bergen in Austria at the same time as the Mercedes DTM driver line up, set the fastest time of winter testing at Homestead last week on his first run of 2001. Dario lapped the Miami oval, where he broke his pelvis in a testing crash last year, in 26.3 seconds, completing 151 laps in all.

The test was also designed for Franchitti to get to know new faces on his crew, including race engineer Iain Watt, a fellow Scot, and chief mechanic George Klotz.

"I'm starting to get more comfortable with the new guys on my team," said Dario. "It is interesting working with Iain and George, my relationship with both of them is building quickly and we're working really well together. I've worked hard on my physical conditioning this winter and I can see George and the crew have also worked hard on the car. I'm ready to learn even more about the new car in the next couple of weeks."

Franchitti's opposition on the day was Bryan Herta (Zakspeed/Forsythe Reynard-Ford), Michael Jourdain Jr. (Bettenhausen Reynard-Ford), Oriol Servia (Sigma Reynard-Ford) and Alex Tagliani (Player's/Forsythe Reynard-Ford).

Team manager Moyer said: "This was a great test for the team. We had no mechanical failures on the car and we were able to keep it running quick, even in race balance."

Franchitti will continue his test programme on February 14-15 at the Homestead-Miami Speedway road course.