Franchitti tops Miami test

Franchitti set his time in the final minutes of the session to displace team-mate Dan Wheldon, who had been fastest for most of the day. The Scot's time of 1m10.175s around the 2.21-mile circuit was more than 0.2s faster than Wheldon's lap from the morning session. These two were the only drivers who managed to better new Ganassi signing Ryan Briscoe's lap from Wednesday.

AGR's Honda-powered Dallaras recorded the four fastest laps in the morning session. Those laps held sway for much of the afternoon as well until Helio Castroneves and his Penske Dallara-Toyota moved into second behind Wheldon with a lap of 1:10.491s. Then with three minutes left in the session, Franchitti bumped everyone down a notch.

AGR, which dominated last year's championship with three of its drivers ending the season as multiple race winners, had four cars in the top five places, with defending IRL champion Tony Kanaan fourth and Bryan Herta fifth - proving that the introduction of road courses is unlikely to break the team's competitive streak. All of AGR's drivers could be described as road course specialists.

Franchitti, who did much of the offseason road-course testing for AGR, downplayed concerns expressed by some owners, drivers and engineers about specification brake components and gearboxes.

"I was very nervous when I showed up for that first test here (in September)," Franchitti said. "Within three laps, I was like, 'Okay, this is going to be cool.' I was definitely critical of the gearbox in a lot of situations last year, but I haven't had any problems with it so far. With the brakes, there's a problem with the pads, but they'll be able to rectify that."

Thursday's sessions were peppered by minor spins and off-track moments, including two incidents involving Roger Yasukawa during the first two hours of the day. Rahal- signing Danica Patrick and Scott Sharp also ran off course during the morning session.