Franchitti tips Kanaan for Indy victory

Despite having his choice somewhat compromised by being a Ganassi driver now, the Scot clearly showed his wish for the Brazilian to take his maiden win at Indy after being unlucky last year.

Kanaan led a race-high 83 laps of the event a year ago and was in the lead when the red flag flew after 113 laps. He later pitted from the lead 11 laps before the rain returned for a second time during the race, when Franchitti was in the lead.

"That's a difficult one because I want to see the boss win but I also think Tony Kanaan deserves the win there," said Franchitti when asked by autosport.com to make his pick for Sunday's 92nd running of the Indy 500.

"He's been so good for so many years so I would really like to see him win it and also would like to see the Ganassi cars win because I'd love to see Chip win again. He loves that race and puts so much effort in it.

"My old teammates obviously Danica, Marco have got a pretty special place for me too, but I think they've got a lot more time in the future to win it. It will be interesting.

"I really see it coming down to a race of the usual characters, so the Ganassi cars, the AGR cars and the Penske cars."

Franchitti, who continues to recover from an ankle injury sustained in a NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Talladega, says the new IRL teams coming from Champ Car may be able to cause a few surprises, despite most of them struggling to keep up with the pace of the series regulars in qualifying.

"I think what you're going to see is the guys coming from Champ Car will be more competitive in the race because you'll see they'll be able to do more. Their driving will have more input," Franchitti added.

"So I think we'll see some of those guys be closer to the front. I guess we'll see a couple of surprises there actually because I think they're very good teams, very good drivers, but they don't have that knowledge of how to make those car go fast yet in a qualifying situation.

"I think in a race situation it will be different, though."