Motorsport: Franchitti settles for second as his team wins Daytona

Bathgate's Dario Franchitti had to content himself with second place in the 49th running of the Daytona 24-Hours race. The Scot's Ganassi BMW-Riley Prototype, which led for much of the second half of the race, eventually finished 2.070secs behind the sister car of Scott Pruett.
By The Newsroom
Published 28th Jan 2011, 11:10 BST
Updated 31st Jan 2011, 11:00 BST

"Yeah, it's disappointing not to win again," Franchitti, who won with Ganassi in 2008, said immediately after the race which covered 720 laps of the 3.560-mile Florida track.

"We were comfortably ahead, about 30-seconds, before the late safety car period eroded that advantage; but that's one of the things you have to accept in motor racing. The main thing is we got a 1-2 result for Team Ganassi, which is what we set out to do."

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The result clinched Ganassi's fourth win in the race in six years. Triple IndyCar champ and double Indy500 winner Franchitti - co-driven by F1 winner Juan Pablo Montoya, IndyCar champ Scott Dixon and Jamie McMurray - held off the Porsche-Riley of last year's winner Joao Barbosa by just 0.256secs.

There was frustration, though, for Wishaw's Ryan Dalziel, the winner 12 months ago. The 28-year-old Scot saw any hopes of winning back-to-back Daytona races disappear when his Ford-Riley was forced to retire with five hours remaining.