Franchitti glad he tried NASCAR

Three days after announcing he would move from Chip Ganassi's NASCAR team to his IndyCar operation for the 2009 season, Franchitti admitted that at times he thought he had made a mistake in trying stock cars.

"There were definitely a couple of days when I did think that - no point in beating around the bush about that," said Franchitti. "But there were days when I really enjoyed it.

"Looking back, I wouldn't have changed anything. I would make the same choice again. I got to experience something completely different, and maybe I will again in the future. Who knows?"

Franchitti decided last weekend to accept team owner Ganassi's offer to move from his NASCAR team to his IndyCar team, ending Franchitti's season-long experiment with stock cars.

"It happened pretty quick," Franchitti said. "We tossed the idea around for a while, but it was really over the Detroit weekend that Chip said, 'Do you really want to do this, or what?' I was like, 'Yeah.' When we decided that, the deal was done in about half an hour. It wasn't a long, drawn-out negotiation, let's put it that way."

The move pairs last year's IndyCar Series champion Franchitti with current points leader Scott Dixon, who has a 30-point lead heading into Sunday's season finale at Chicagoland Speedway.

The two battled down to the final race last year at Chicago before Franchitti - then with Andretti Green Racing - won the championship when Dixon ran out of fuel on the final lap.

"I want to get in the car and get the job done," Franchitti said. "You believe you can do it, but until you actually see it, there's always that nagging doubt. I want to be as good or better than I was when I left."

Franchitti struggled in his brief run in NASCAR, first with an injury and later with Ganassi's sponsorship issues. He sustained a broken ankle in a crash in a Nationwide Series race at Talladega, then sat idle in NASCAR's top series after Ganassi pulled the plug on Franchitti's Sprint Cup car when he couldn't find a sponsor.

"It was all about the challenge, and my God was it a challenge," Franchitti said. "If I was going to do it again, I'd try to get a bit more testing and more built up before getting in there. It was one of those deals where everything that could go wrong did go wrong. That was tough."

Franchitti will replace Dan Wheldon, who subsequently signed with Panther Racing.

Wheldon, a former teammate of Franchitti at Andretti Green Racing, began looking elsewhere when Ganassi offered the No. 10 car to Tony Kanaan last month. Kanaan eventually re-signed with AGR, and Franchitti said he called him as soon as he decided to accept Ganassi's offer to return to the IndyCar Series.

"I didn't talk to TK beforehand," Franchitti said. "I phoned him before we were going to make the announcement. I thought that was important because TK is one of my very best friends.

"I wanted to let him know what was going on. I wanted to let him know before, but Chip read me the riot act. He said, 'You cannot tell anybody about this.' I respected that."

Franchitti says he hopes to be in the Ganassi car for the non-points race next month at Surfers Paradise in Australia.