Klein Tools/Canadian Club 2006 Firestone Indy 400 Fact Sheet
July 26, 2006 Indianapolis, Ind. Klein Tools/Canadian Club Driver Dario Franchitti 2006 Firestone Indy 400 Fact Sheet Who: #27 Klein Tools/Canadian Club Dallara/Honda/Firestone driver Dario Franchitti What: Firestone Indy 400, Round 11 of the Indy Racing League® IndyCar® Series Where: Michigan International Speedway, Brooklyn, Mich. When: Sunday, July 30, 2006 Television: ABC Sports (Live), 3:30 p.m. (EDT) Dario Franchitti on the Firestone Indy 400: "Michigan is a track that I've driven a lot and have had some success on. Based on the test that Tony (Kanaan) had last week, I hope we will be pretty good there. Our results over the past four races have certainly improved; we just need to keep working as we have towards getting the Klein Tools/Canadian Club car into victory circle." Dario Franchitti Facts This will be Franchitti's eighth start at Michigan International Speedway. His best finish was a second- place result in 2001. He is currently seventh in the IndyCar Series driver championship. Franchitti has collected consecutive sixth-place finishes in the last two IndyCar Series events at Nashville and Milwaukee. He has three top-six results in the last four races. He recorded his best finish of the 2006 season with a third-place result at Richmond. Franchitti scored a fourth-place finish at the 1.5-mile oval at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Franchitti collected his fourth career IndyCar Series win in 2005 at the season finale in California. He finished fourth in the 2005 driver point standings with 498 points, his highest IndyCar Series finish. The Scotsman had eight top-five and 13 top-10 finishes and led 448 laps in 2005. He has recorded three career IndyCar Series pole positions, those coming at Texas (June 10, 2004), California (Oct. 16, 2005) and St. Petersburg (April 2, 2006). Three of Franchitti's four IndyCar Series victories have come on tracks of 1.33 miles or smaller, including the 1-mile ovals at Milwaukee (2004) and Pikes Peak (2004) and the 1.33-mile Nashville track (2005). His fourth victory came on the two-mile D-shaped oval at California Speedway (2005). Franchitti has 14 major open-wheel racing victories and 14 career pole positions. Since 1998, Franchitti has won more American major open-wheel races than all but four drivers. Dario Franchitti IndyCar Series Statistics Top Top Laps Starts Wins 5 10 Poles Led Pts (Rk) Earnings 2006 10 0 2 5 1 40 231 (7th) $797,555 Career 47 4 16 28 3 837 $3,488,665 Allen McDonald, Race Engineer, #27 Klein Tools/Canadian Club Dallara/Honda/Firestone on the Firestone Indy 400: "I think the Klein Tools/Canadian Club car could have been better than our finish at Milwaukee but the yellows fell in the wrong places and that hurt us a little bit. However, we've had some solid finishes over the last few events and we've found some things at recent tests that should help us on the race track, so we're going to try and climb in the championship standings and hopefully get a couple of wins."