"Welcome back, Dario," they shouted.
Franchitti smiled and returned the greeting. It's good to be back home.
The Scot has returned to open-wheel racing after taking a shot at NASCAR following the 2007 season, when he won the Indianapolis 500 and IndyCar Series championship.
The stock car adventure ended abruptly last July when team owner Chip Ganassi closed Franchitti's team for lack of sponsorship, with few prospects of finding any backing in the bleak economy.
Tuesday, during a break on the opening day of preseason testing at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Franchitti said he has mixed feelings about his short stay in NASCAR.
"I'm disappointed because I've been lucky enough to win in everything I've ever done," he said. "So the fact I didn't win, or (have) what I consider success, kind of grates a little bit. I'm very happy to be where I am right now, with this opportunity. But I'd like to have been successful in that area."
But Franchitti doesn't consider his time in NASCAR a failure.
"I was getting the hang of it by the end of it," he said. "Certainly, the last three races in the Cup car I was starting to run as good if not better than my teammates. And, in the Nationwide car, we qualified on the pole at the road course (at Watkins Glen) and on the front row at Bristol and led 80-something laps there.
"So I was getting the hang of it, but it just wasn't to be. The economy and stuff, all those things, it just wasn't to be."
For other drivers who have run head-on into the economic turmoil in the past year, that would have meant looking for another ride when few are available.
But Ganassi, whose IndyCar team won the Indy 500 and the championship last year with Scott Dixon, needed a replacement for Dan Wheldon, who left to join Panther Racing.
Franchitti was the obvious choice.
"When there was a possibility of an opening on our IndyCar team, the only person I thought about was Dario," Ganassi said when he made the announcement last September. "This is going to be a great move for Dario and for our team."
Franchitti is pretty happy, too.
"How lucky am I that I got to go away and do (NASCAR) for a year, come back here and jump into the best drive in the paddock?" he said. "Believe me, I'm well aware of how lucky I am."
Mike Hull, the team's managing director, said he has no doubt that Franchitti can be a contender for race wins and championships right from the outset.
"I don't think he'll miss a beat," Hull said Tuesday night.
"I don't think Dario's going to miss an opportunity because he's got a teammate who is very unselfish and is going to share everything," he added. "And, in turn, Scott Dixon as a teammate is going to receive from Dario what he needs. ... I think we've already found out how much they complement each other and how much they can help each other."
Dixon echoed is boss.
"I think he's going to fare extremely well," Dixon said. "I think he's more motivated, basically because he had a bit of a bad year and I think he wants to right a few wrongs. I think he's going to be, at least from my standpoint, my toughest competition for the whole season."
Dixon was fastest among the 21 drivers who ran in the opening test session Tuesday night, while Franchitti wasn't far behind in third.
"I'm just getting used to the speed of it, what happens in an IndyCar and the feeling of the car," Franchitti said. "I've already made good changes, so I think we'll be all right. I have no worries about the car. You can see the job the Target guys do. I just need to get myself up to speed, and we'll get that done."
There was some surprise when Franchitti decided to come back to IndyCar, particularly since there had been plenty of talk that his wife, actress Ashley Judd, considers open-wheel racing too dangerous.
"Ashley and I were driving back from the Nationwide race in Michigan (in August)," Franchitti said. "Chip and I had talked about the possibility of me going back to IndyCar as early as the first week in July. I turn and I say, 'Hey, how would you feel if I went back to IndyCar?' I thought, 'This should be interesting.'
"She said, 'I would love it. I would absolutely love for you to get to go back and do what you love and what you're very, very good at.' It wasn't the reply I was expecting. Her support means a lot."
Franchitti said the talk about his wife's fears are exaggerated.
"I think a lot of people made that up," he said. "Ashley's been through a lot with me, from falling off my (motorcycle) and breaking my back to some of the big (open-wheel) accidents I've walked away from. She's been around some pretty bad times in the sport. She's well aware of the dangers of it and she accepts those, as all my family did. That's the way it has to be or you can't do this."
And, now that he's back, Franchitti feels comfortable and ready to compete.
"I have years and years, 12 years I think, of running either Champ Cars or IndyCars, so I have a lot of experience," he said. "All that was kind of the culmination of years of driving smaller cars that handled the same.
"When I went to NASCAR, it threw everything I knew out the window with a completely different style of driving," Franchitti noted. "It should be a bit easier going back the other way."
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