Franchitti Puts ArcaEx Car on Pole at California Speedway

For Immediate Release www.andrettigreen.com

Fontana, Calif. (Oct. 15, 2005) - Dario Franchitti recorded a lap of 219.398 miles per hour (32.8171 seconds) in the #27 ArcaEx Dallara/Honda/Firestone during qualifying at the 2-mile California Speedway and will start from the pole position for Sunday's running of the Indy Racing LeagueŽ IndyCarŽ Series California Indy 400.

The final event of the 2005 IndyCar Series season is set to go green at 3:45 p.m. (EDT) Sunday with ESPN providing live broadcast coverage of the 200-lap event beginning at 3:30 p.m. (EDT).

Dario Franchitti, #27 ArcaEx Dallara/Honda/Firestone: "I got every drop of speed out of the ArcaEx car. On these 2-mile tracks, qualifying is really down to the engineers and the engine guys and today they got it right. We still need to make some changes to ensure that we have a good race car. If you have a good car, you'll come from the back to the front, which I expect my teammates to do. You just don't want to go from the front to the back."

  California Indy 400 Qualifying
 Pos.      Name                          Speed (mph)          Time (secs)
  1       Dario Franchitti                 219.398              32.8171
  2       Tomas Scheckter                  218.902              32.8915
  3       Sam Hornish Jr.                  218.602              32.9365
  4       Danica Patrick                   218.199              32.9974
  5       Buddy Rice                       218.029              33.0231
  6       Helio Castroneves                217.765              33.0631
  7       Dan Wheldon                      217.702              33.0728
  8       Bryan Herta                      217.408              33.1175
  9       Scott Sharp                      217.261              33.1399
  10      Tony Kanaan                      217.170              33.1537
  11      Tomas Enge                       217.143              33.1578
  12      Kosuke Matsuura                  217.037              33.1741
  13      Vitor Meira                      216.585              33.2433
  14      Jaques Lazier                    216.491              33.2578
  15      Scott Dixon                      216.318              33.2844
  16      Patrick Carpentier               215.704              33.3790
  17      Alex Barron                      215.631              33.3904
  18      A.J. Foyt IV                     215.622              33.3917
  19      Jimmy Kite                       215.602              33.3948
  20      Roger Yasukawa                   214.676              33.5389
  21      Ed Carpenter                     212.411              33.8966
  22      Thiago Medeiros                 No Speed             No Time