INDIANAPOLIS — Chip Ganassi isn’t backing away from the harsh criticism he leveled at his own team last weekend.
On Wednesday, Ganassi acknowledged he held a round-table meeting with his struggling team two days ago to discuss how to correct problems that have plagued his NASCAR racers this season. Those woes included Dario Franchitti missing last Sunday’s race at Texas.
“Let’s face it, I said some things in the paper about how I wasn’t satisfied with our performance, and I still feel that way,” Ganassi said. “If you can’t qualify for a race, that’s pathetic. So we had a meeting of the minds.”
Ganassi, who was with his IRL team for a two-day Indianapolis 500 media availability, declined to elaborate on details of the meeting. He did say the team devised a new plan for this week’s race in Phoenix, one he hopes will mark a turnaround to a less-than-stellar start.
“We’ll see how it goes,” he said.
It couldn’t get much worse.
Juan Pablo Montoya, a former Indy 500 winner, is the team’s top driver, but is 19th in the points standings, more than 300 behind leader Jeff Burton. Reed Sorenson, another driver for Target Chip Ganassi, is 27th in points and, like Montoya, finished two laps down at Texas.
At least they made it onto the track Sunday. Franchitti, last year’s Indy winner, has struggled to make the transition from Indy cars to the heavier stock cars in his rookie NASCAR season and failed to make the starting grid.
The combination was enough to draw the wrath of Ganassi.
But he did say Wednesday the drivers were not fully responsible for the sub-par performances.
“Let’s just say I think we were a little bit at fault for not giving him (Franchitti) a car to qualify,” Ganassi said. “We’re a better team than that, and we’re hugely disappointed when that type of thing happens.”
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