Frankly Franchitti

Sunday was a frustrating day, but at least it was another finish, and one thing that counts in Champcar is finishing races.

Sixth place isn't terrible, but it isn't great. We're still learning, and you don't build something like a relationship with a new engineer in a day. There are things we could have done better, but if we just keep building at the rate we're doing we'll be OK. To be honest, neither of us expected to click 100 percent straight away.

Qualifying was a bit of a lottery. It was almost dry for the first group and then before we went out it rained, so I thought we'd end up slower than all the guys from the first group, and we'd have lost any advantage we had of being in the 'fast' group. It started to dry up as the session wore on. We came in for the stop to put on the new tyres, and I asked the team to change the set-up, but they didn't hear me and we didn't make the change. So we were running around with the same imbalance that we had had before. Everybody was going faster, and with just a few minutes to go we started doing better times than the first group. Everyone's best times came on their last lap, but on mine, Kenny Brack was three or four lengths in front of me, and he went off, and I got a bit distracted and followed him off which ruined what would have been my best lap. It could have been worse, but it could have been better.

As far as the race was concerned, I made a good start from sixth, but I was on the wrong side of Gil. I could have been a bit more aggressive, but I was kind of interested in getting through the first corner! Then Michel Jourdain passed me at the end of the first lap, and I thought he was going to be really strong. He was braking a lot later than I could, but he didn't really go anywhere. It was very difficult to pass. I certainly couldn't because the car I had was at its weakest on braking, which is unusual for us.

We were trying to save fuel to do extra laps like we did in Mexico, and make up places on the track, but as both stops came under yellow, that negated that idea.

The stops were good, Jimmy Vasser was the only one that passed us during the stops. As I pulled out of my pit, Minassian was coming in, and he was right in front of me and cruising! I don't know what he was doing, but he wasn't doing 50mph, more like 35mph, and obviously I couldn't pass, so I lost time there and a place because of that. It was a bit awkward because of where our pit position was. We were right at the start of the pits, but it meant that even when we'd finished filling with fuel people were still coming in to stop, so we'd get traffic in the pits.

I was very quick through the twisty sections, but that didn't really help me because whoever was in front of me at the time was holding me up, then when we got to the places where I could pass I was too slow.

It's been such a big gap from the first race to this one that with the testing ban Long Beach almost feels like the first race of the season again. Four weeks out of the car is a pretty long time. I think it's certainly easier once the season is in full swing, and you get into a rhythm. Physically this race wasn't difficult at all for me. The only problem was some small blisters on my hand, but when you're driving every week you don't get that. I'll get those hardened up for the next race. Now we've got four ovals races next on the calendar. So hopefully we can continue our testing form from Homestead to those next races.

I flew straight back to Scotland after the race on Sunday night. My brother Marino is racing at Snetterton in the British GT Championship for Porsche next weekend, so I'll go and watch. He's sharing with Kelvin Burt who won the British F3 Championship a few years ago, so that's good for Marino, he'll learn a lot from Kelvin. They were leading the first round at Silverstone, but then they suffered some suspension problems and they dropped back to fourth, which was a disappointing result, but they showed what they can do. At least he got fastest lap. There's a few other friends racing at Snetterton as well, James Courtney, who is in the British F3 Championship for the Jaguar team, and Ryan Dalziel, and Patrick Long. It'll be good to see them again.

And then we're off to Texas.