By Andrew Cutler
May 21 2010

With all day rain and thunderstorms in the forecast for Friday, it looks like the newly shortened schedule for the month of May at Indy has just gotten even shorter. With all of Monday and parts of both Tuesday and Thursday also lost to rain, the drivers now have just one last two hour practice on Saturday morning, just before qualifications, to get their cars ready to run for the Pole.

As of right now, a slight chance of rain is still on the boards for Saturday.

Over the past five afternoons that they could log laps, the crews and drivers worked on dialing the cars in for the race - which is something of a guessing game, given that the weather forecast this far out is suspect at best! - and then turned their attention to getting them into qualifying trim. The six rookies on the entry list also had to undergo the 'unique to Indy' Rookie Orientation Program, where they proved their ability to run four sets of ten steady, smooth laps in an increasing 5mph speed range: 200-205mph/206-210mph/211-215mph/216-220mph. I have not been able to find any reports that would indicate that any of the rookies failed this 'examination'.

On the speed charts, the seasonably cool weather made for fairly quick times, with the usual suspects - Helio Castroneves, Scott Dixon, Ryan Briscoe, Tony Kanaan and Marco Andretti - posting several laps at 226.5+ mph, and an occasional 227.0+. Each day's speed chart also brought a few pleasant suprises among the Top Five , as Paul Tracy, Alex Tagliani, Mario Moraes and Hideki Mutoh all showed fast form at one point or another.

Thursday was - unfortunately - the ONLY day that Burno Junqueria made it onto the track. 'Junky' has a seat in FAZZT Racing's 2nd car, but the sponsorship check that is paying for his ride has yet to find it's way to Indy. He did take out the Bryan Herta Autosport #29 car, that rookie Sebastien Saavedra will attempt to qualify in this weekend, to give them a veteran's feedback on how to dial it in and make it faster (Saavedra has been mired near the bottom of the speed charts all week).

Qualifications consists of one car (the order is set by a 'blind draw' lottery on Friday night) at a time making a four lap run, with the speed average being the mark that they stand upon. Teams can opt to make up to three attempts. If they incure problems and have to abort a run after taking the green flag, it still counts as an attempt.  They can also have a completed run 'thrown out' if they wish to try to improve upon it - but they cannot get it back if the new time is worse. 

Pole Day qualifications will be held on Saturday, starting at 11am and running until 4:30 pm, with the first 24 grid spots up for grabs. At 4:30 the top nine qualifiers (in an earlier story I mistakenly said that it would be the top ten) will have their times thrown out and they will make a second four lap run to settle the final order of the first three rows on the grid amongst themselves. Sunday will be 'Bump Day', with thirteen (or twelve, if Junky's check doesn't show up) drivers fighting it out for the last nine grid spots.

I will be at Pole Day, & will post plenty of pictures - and, hopefully, some video - as well as a full qualifications report next week, just as early as I can make the time to do so.