Franchitti surprised by performance

The 2007 champion is making his open wheel comeback with Ganassi after an abortive attempt to establish a NASCAR career, and is contesting this weekend's non-championship Surfers Paradise IndyCar race as a precursor to a full season with the squad in 2009.

Franchitti was quicker than his teammate - and current champion - Scott Dixon for much of practice, and took fourth on the grid in the rain-hit qualifying session.

"It's been pretty good," he said. "First practice was okay, but then the rain came and I thought it was going to be a bit of a challenge because I haven't driven in an IndyCar in the wet for hell knows how long.

"It seemed to work okay. It was dry for the first half of the lap, so I thought, let's go to slicks here. I went tearing into Turn 7 and it was completely wet and I almost stuck it in the fence.

"The car was awesome and the Target boys did a hell of a job preparing the car. It's gone a lot better than I expected."

The Scot reckoned he could have done better in the final shoot-out for the top six positions, by which time the track had dried.

"I overdrove the Fast Six," Franchitti admitted. "I felt driving in wet knocked my rhythm off a little bit and I didn't do a good job."

While Franchitti has been competitive all weekend, his predecessor in the second Ganassi car has not fared so well. Dan Wheldon has moved to Panther Racing from Surfers onwards, and is only 18th on the grid after struggling with brake problems during practice.

"The changes we made prior to qualifying really improved the car, but it was a bit slick out there and that had a lot to do with the performance," said Wheldon.

"It's been a bit of a difficult weekend for us and we lost the first day because of the braking problem. The good thing is that the focus for this weekend is to do everything we can to prepare for next season and that's what the team has done.

"We're looking forward to the race tomorrow and we'll think about trying some alternate strategies and do what we can to get a good result."