Following the moderator's turn, Dario Franchitti and Michael Andretti answer questions from the press.

Q: Dario, on Thursday you described yourself and Scott Dixon as the invisible men. Now you both finish first and second. For being invisible, you certainly were seen quite clearly today.

FRANCHITTI: That didn't escape me. When we came down to what was going to be the last restart, I looked back and saw Dixon there. I thought, 'Hmm, this should make people sit up and take notice.'

We kind of flew under the radar all month - all year, actually, I think. But this whole month, it's an interesting thing to go through, the whole Indy 500, because you put all your eggs in one basket. This thing only comes along once a year. It really hit me today after Lap 113, when we thought the race was finished, that was it. We figured that was a chance gone for this year. You put so much into it. If you saw the way our team worked together, how hard the engineers worked back at the shop, the mechanics, to get these cars quick and make the difference between that last year, if you saw the way the five drivers worked together, the five sets of engineers, it's bloody impressive. I'm really, really proud to be a part of it.

Any one of the cars today could have won this race, and it came down to, you know, there was some luck involved. That's not to sort of diminish what we've achieved today. That's the job that this team did: they put five cars on the grid capable of winning. We put ourselves in right place and things worked out.

Q: Dario, how does it feel to have won this race burning a hundred percent renewable fuel in your tank and how well did it perform in your car?

FRANCHITTI: I've had absolutely no problem with ethanol. I felt it worked really well. We were getting pretty good fuel mileage under the yellows today. I was quite happy for that. We knew the rain was coming. We were just hoping we had enough fuel to make it there, and we did.

Q: Dario, any kind of extra satisfaction or maybe a feeling, you talked about it being a roller-coaster month, to get a win after the way pole day finished up for you? I'm sure this kind of makes up for all of that.

FRANCHITTI: I made a kind of a joke with TK, actually. We were in the engineering office, sitting there. I turned to TK. He was looking stressed because he had to wait out to see if the track was going to dry. I turned around said, "It's your turn now." I won't tell you what his reply was (laughter).

As I said, it's not really sunk in yet. The two things that really give me the satisfaction of today's race were coming -- improving the car from where we started and then coming from the back through the field again. That felt good.

Q: Dario, who made the decision to fully fuel? Was it you, John Anderson? Were you feeling extra lucky after your dad got a hole-in-one this month?

FRANCHITTI: That's a good point. Michael did ask, had my dad used up all the family luck for the month? My dad got a hole-in-one last Wednesday at the Brickyard Crossing. First hole-in-one. We're pretty proud of him.

When we took the tires, we only had to put I think 5 gallons in the car because we pitted pretty soon before the red flag came out. It was a no-brainer to fully fuel the thing.

Q: Dario and Michael, can you spell out what you did during the lengthy rain delay to keep from being bored, stay focused, all that.

FRANCHITTI: We talked about some -- we talked about strategy, how we would behave, how we would try and make sure that an AGR car finished in this position. We talked about that. We had some fun, as well, cracked a couple jokes. Just tried to ease the tension a bit. We all sat in engineering, put our feet up, hung out. It was good.

ANDRETTI: I was right there. Same thing.

FRANCHITTI: Little bit of pasta. The guys at hospitality made us a nice bowl of pasta. It was very good.

Q: Any leftovers?

FRANCHITTI: I think so. It was a big bowl.

Q: Toward the end, Dario, was there a bit of anxiety hoping the rain would come, knowing the rain was on its way? I assume you knew it was on its way. Talk about the desire to be in this position when the rain finally hits.

FRANCHITTI: The one comment that sticks in my mind was John Anderson saying on the radio, "The rain's eight blocks away." I'm like, "C'mon."

When you get in that position, we knew we had to pit one more time, we pretty much were sure everybody else had to pit one more time, too, it was going to come down to a dogfight. There's a lot of strong cars, especially, as I say, my teammates, the Ganassi guys, the Penske guys. So whatever happened, it came down to that dogfight, it was going to be hard. So I was hoping for the rain.

Q: Michael, what were your feelings to see your son going upside-down and then at the same time your other driver winning the race? Had to be a range of emotions.

ANDRETTI: I didn't know he went upside-down. I just knew he was involved in an accident. Right away, Barry was on the radio telling me, "Marco is fine, Marco is fine. He's talking on the radio. Everything's cool." Then I was just wondering what happened.

Then, obviously once I got the good news, then it was all about hoping and looking at the skies and hoping that it rained soon so we get the win with Dario, so...

Q: Michael, this is your last one. Are you at peace with the decision, how this has finished?

ANDRETTI: Yeah. I mean, I was disappointed with today. I really thought there was going to be a lot more out of today. It was just a day that nothing worked. I think we had an OK car. It's just I got mixed up in the back, and I could never get it to the front. Every time we tried a different strategy, something else would go wrong. It was just one of those days.

It's like it's just the way it happened. Obviously it wasn't meant to be, to win it as a driver. We won it as an owner. Two of the last three years isn't too bad. Like I said, when we won it in '05, maybe I'm just meant to be -- meant to win 15 of these things, huh (laughter)?

Q: Dario, you said at the end of the 2006 you thought you had a little bit more left in you. Sam Hanks famously retired from this race in Victory Lane in 1957. Do you think there's enough left in you, and did this race give you a little more?

FRANCHITTI: Yeah, when we sat down, the four of us actually sat down in California, we were just talking about the following year. I think we just won at Fontana, hadn't we? I was feeling good about things. I wasn't sure. I was just being honest. I wasn't sure how much more I wanted to do. Then when the fairly average year we had last year, my motivation came back stronger than ever.

I don't see me quitting any time soon. There's a good few years left now and a championship.

You know, one of the things that really helps is having a 20-year-old teammate. Seriously. To see life through -- TK and I are old married men now. To see things through Marco's eyes is pretty cool. I've had some great teammates in my life. Really had some fantastic teammates, but I don't think we'll ever have this situation again. It really is a privilege to be part of this team.

Q: Speaking of the team, Dario wanted the chance to get back out there at Lap 113 when the rain came, but as a car owner, you have four in the top five, were you hoping that rain would just last a little bit longer?

ANDRETTI: Yeah, it was mixed emotions. We knew with my car, if everything was perfect, we only had to do two more stops and everybody else maybe had to do three. There was a shot we could do it there. But then on the other side, we were running one, two, three, and five at that point. It was a tough one. At that point it was just like we got to do what we got to do and hope and pray, you know, we end up with at least one of our cars up there. That's what happened.

D.B. © CAPSIS International
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