Team Penske has three cars in this year’s 500, with Hélio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe starting first and second and Will Power on the outside of row three. Penske’s cars are very strong and the team is chasing its 15th win at Indy to compliment its 15th pole earned by Castroneves.

The Brazilian is in his 10th year with Penske and is looking for his third 500 victory. He scored back-to-back wins in 2001-02, and Hélio is highly motivated following his acquittal on federal tax charges. Team-mate Briscoe is in his second year with Penske’s Indycar team and this will be his fourth 500. The 27-year-old Australian has won on ovals and has the experience and equipment to chase victory.

Countryman Power makes his second start at Indy and his first with Penske. At this stage, having been hired to fill Castroneves’s seat while the latter was occupied with his tax case, Power will not race again in this year’s IRL after the 500. So the taciturn but talented Power will be eager to do well on Sunday.

Chip Ganassi’s team is as strong as ever with the 2007 and ’08 Indy winners, Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon, starting from third and fifth on the grid, while 2007 Indy Lights champion Alex Lloyd starts from row four in a third Ganassi satellite car run by Sam Schmidt Motorsports.

Franchitti and Dixon were slightly off the pace in qualifying but are sure to be in the thick of it on race day. Both have the experience, speed and are race-savvy, while team manager Mike Hull and team owner Ganassi are equally as good as Roger Penske and his racing chief Tim Cindric at playing the strategic games required as the race and yellow flags unfold. So Castroneves, Briscoe, Franchitti and Dixon are equal favourites to win this year’s 500, with Power on slightly longer odds.

The IRL’s third big team is Andretti-Green Racing, winner of the 500 with Franchitti in 2007 and Dan Wheldon in ’05. But the four-car AGR team has looked second best at Indy this year, with team leader Tony Kanaan struggling for speed in his car and resorting to a back-up in qualifying. Still, Kanaan starts from the outside of row two and is a racer who’s entirely capable of stealing his first Indy win.

The odds are longer on AGR’s three other drivers – Marco Andretti, Danica Patrick and Hideki Mutoh, who will start the race respectively from eighth, 10th and 16th. Young Andretti came close to winning in 2006 but has been less impressive over the past 18 months, struggling in the midfield on most road circuits and in street races. Marco is at his best on ovals, Indianapolis in particular, and needs a solid result. Patrick is also at her best on the big speedway and will be trying hard for a good result in what many believe will be her last 500 before switching to NASCAR next year.

Newman/Haas/Lanigan’s Graham Rahal is most likely to cause the biggest upset of the day. The mature Rahal, 19, has done an excellent job in his second year at Indy to qualify fourth, splitting Franchitti and Dixon. I’ve known Graham since he was a kid, so I’m prejudiced, but I believe he’s the most talented, disciplined and most complete of today’s young American open-wheel racers. With any luck he’ll show all those strengths on Sunday.

New NHL team-mate Robert Doornbos had a rough initiation, crashing twice after looking good through the opening days of practice. He recovered well to record the fastest qualifying run on the second weekend and starts 23rd.

Who else might figure in the 93rd 500? Paul Tracy is an obvious choice. He will make his second Indy start in 14 years from 13th, in the middle of the field. Paul finished an unhappy second to Castroneves in 2002 and is trying to salvage his career with Kevin Kalkhoven and Jimmy Vasser’s KV Racing team.

Other dark horses include Brits Justin Wilson and Dan Wheldon, who will start 15th and 18th, and Brazilian Mario Moraes, who makes his second Indy start aboard a KV Racing entry from the inside of row three. Neither Wilson nor Wheldon are with first-class teams, but the unheralded Moraes looked good in practice and qualifying and may surprise on race day.

Also worth watching are fastest rookie qualifier Raphael Matos, who starts from the outside of row four, and Champ Car veteran Oriol Servia, who qualified Bobby Rahal’s car after minimal practice. He starts from row nine.

The only practice session this week is Friday’s ‘Carburetion Day’ followed by an Indy Lights race and pitstop competition. The 200-lap, 500-mile race takes the green flag on Sunday at 1pm EST.

Briscoe was faster than Castroneves on their first qualifying runs early in the afternoon, but both went quicker later in the day after withdrawing their original cars and speeds. This is Castroneves’s third Indy 500 pole and the 15th time that one of Roger Penske’s cars will lead the field away at the Brickyard.

“The car was too comfortable on our first run,” said Castroneves. “We worked together and made the cars a little more on the edge, a little quicker. It’s a lot of fun when you push the limit and everybody works together to do it. This is a team effort and this team is the best.”

Added Briscoe: “The cars were so good straight off the truck and that gives us a lot of confidence to really trim out the cars for qualifying. It’s been exciting and it’s such a great feeling knowing we’re going into the Indy 500 with very strong cars.”

Castroneves was acquitted on federal tax evasion charges last month and is delighted to once again be a free man able to pursue his chosen profession. “I feel at home here at Indianapolis,” he said. “I just have to thank everybody for the warm welcome I’ve received. It’s like a big family. Racing is my life – it’s what I love and I have to thank all the fans. It means a lot.”

The biggest challenge to Penske came from Chip Ganassi’s cars. Dario Franchitti completed the front row with a run at 224.010mph while last year’s winner Scott Dixon was fifth fastest, just 0.1sec slower than Franchitti over the four laps.

“It would have been nice to be on pole,” said Dario. “But we’ve won from third on the grid before, so hopefully it’s a good omen. Honestly, that was most of the speed the car had in it today. We got hit by a couple of gusts of wind which cost us, but we just didn’t have the speed to match the Penske cars. Those were definitely the craziest qualifying laps I’ve driven here. With the wind and everything, we were hanging it out today.”

Graham Rahal qualified an impressive fourth, splitting the Ganassi pair for Newman/Haas/Lanigan. Rahal had to scrub his original qualifying run because the team wanted to run a slightly different configuration for the race, and he was without a spare car after team-mate Robert Doornbos crashed two – one on Friday and the second on Saturday morning. As a result Doornbos will have to qualify next weekend.

“The car was really nice,” said Rahal. “It had maybe a bit too much understeer. But we got through our run safely, which is what we needed to do. It says a lot for the work this team has done and how much we’ve improved the car over the last year.”

IRL points leader Tony Kanaan was the fastest of Andretti-Green’s four cars. Kanaan qualified sixth and will start the 500 on the outside of row two. Team-mates Marco Andretti and Danica Patrick will start from the third and fourth rows respectively. Also among the first-day qualifiers was Will Power, who put Penske’s third car on the outside of row three.

Fastest in Sunday’s qualifying was rookie Raphael Matos, who lapped his Luczo-Dragon entry owned by Roger Penske’s son Jay at 223.429mph. Matos starts the 500 from 12th on the grid. Paul Tracy was second fastest on Sunday at 223.111mph and will start the race from 13th. Tracy made a couple of qualifying runs on Saturday but was bumped from the top 11. He made two more runs on Sunday before he was satisfied.

Justin Wilson was fourth fastest on Sunday at 222.849mph, qualifying behind Vítor Meira. After making the field on Saturday, Wilson was disqualified for being underweight. Justin re-qualified in good order on Sunday and will start from 14th place in the middle of row five. Also among Sunday’s second-day qualifiers was 2005 Indy winner Dan Wheldon, who crashed on Saturday. Wheldon came back to qualify at 222.777mph and will start from the outside of row six.

The final 11 places in the 33-car field will be determined next weekend, and the race takes place the following Sunday on May 24.

Chip Ganassi (above with Franchitti) announced on Tuesday that Dario Franchitti will replace Dan Wheldon in his Indycar team next year. Ganassi had decided to drop Wheldon (below) after a disappointing year and move Franchitti from his NASCAR team to his IRL squad. Wheldon sealed his fate by qualifying in the middle of the field at Detroit last weekend, then crashing out of the race. Wheldon will move to the Panther team next year where Vítor Meira is team leader.

Franchitti has endured his own struggles this year in his rookie NASCAR season but when Ganassi looked around to consider who the best choice was to replace Wheldon, the answer was obvious. Ganassi first tried to hire Tony Kanaan, but the Brazilian used the approach to help negotiate a new five-year contract with Andretti-Green Racing where he is the clear number one driver. Kanaan’s move left the door wide open for Franchitti to make the decision to return to Indycar. Dario visited last weekend’s IRL race at Detroit and spent most of his time with Ganassi’s team, so his move back to open-wheel racing seemed imminent.

“It is going to be very exciting to have Dario in one of our Indycars next year,” said Ganassi. “I have always admired his competitive spirit when he raced against us and have really grown to see more of what he is about this season while he raced in NASCAR. When there was a possibility of an opening on our Indycar team, the only person I thought about was Dario. This is going to be a great move for Dario and for our team.”

Franchitti said: “Part of the reason that I signed with Ganassi last year was because of how many options that Chip has at his disposal for a driver. You can do almost any form of racing that you want. With unification and the new [Indycar] schedule having more road and street courses, it made me think about this more and more. I have really enjoyed this last season in stock cars and have not completely closed that chapter of my professional career, but the opportunity that arose was just something I could not pass up. I am really looking forward to getting behind the wheel of one of those Target cars and being a team-mate to Scott Dixon. Target is a tremendous sponsor and they and Chip always give you everything you need to win.”

Next season will be the 20th year that Target Stores has been the primary sponsor of Ganassi’s multi-faceted race team. With former Indy 500 winner and IRL champion Franchitti returning to Indycar racing beside this year’s championship hopeful Scott Dixon, Chip’s Indycar team should enjoy a high-profile role in celebrating Target’s anniversary. And for both Dario and Indycar racing as a whole, the ’07 Indy 500 winner’s return to the series should serve as a healthy shot in the arm.

The 92nd running of the Indy 500 takes place on Sunday with Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon favoured to score Chip Ganassi’s first win at the ‘Brickyard’ since Juan Montoya turned the trick in 2000. Dixon and Wheldon will start from the pole and the middle of the front row with Penske driver Ryan Briscoe on the outside. Penske team-mate Helio Castroneves starts on the inside of row two with Danica Patrick beside him and Tony Kanaan on the outside of the second row, and this year’s 500 is expected to be a three-team race between Ganassi, Penske and Andretti-Green.

Meanwhile, I had the great pleasure to sit beside four-time Indy 500 winner Rick Mears at the Speedway on Wednesday afternoon as we signed copies of my new book, ‘Rick Mears – Thanks, the story of Rick Mears and the Mears Gang’. Rick was one of the finest oval track racers of all-time and more than a few respectful fans congratulated him on being, ‘the best driver I ever saw at this place.’

Rick Mears and author Gordon Kirby sign copies of the new book, “Thanks. The Story of Rick Mears and the Mears Gang”

In fifteen starts at Indianapolis between 1978-92, Rick won four times, finished second once and come home third two times. He also took six Indy poles and led 492 laps in all. Rick deliberately used his natural inclination to be as silky smooth as possible to keep pushing the limit.

“I always tried to be smooth and I think that helped on the faster tracks, on the speedways,” he says. “By not being erratic you can run closer to the limit more consistently without stepping over it. If you’re erratic, you’ve got to give yourself more of a cushion, so your average overall isn’t going to be as quick. If you’re smooth and run closer to the limit, lap after lap, it adds up. I think that was more my natural style.

“The cars talk to you and you have to listen to them. If you don’t listen to them, you’re going to step over the limit.”

Incredibly, Rick did not spin a car during his first five years with Penske. “It was making me nervous that I hadn’t spun one because I saw other guys doing it, and I thought, ‘What am I leaving on the table?’ I knew I was going to spin sometime. Obviously, I didn’t want it to happen. Back then, if you spun, they frowned on it. Today, they frown on it if you don’t spin once in a while. That’s the difference in the competition level today and the mindset, which is if you don’t do something wrong once in a while you must not be trying hard enough. But back then; it was the other way around.

“So I didn’t want to spin and when I did finally spin it, I realised that I had been very, very close a lot of times, a lot of times! I was just fortunate it hadn’t happened. That was when I realised I wasn’t leaving a lot on the table.

“That’s what this sport is all about and always has been,” he adds. “It’s a continuous learning curve, no matter how long you’ve been doing it. If you quit learning, that’s when it’s time to get out.”

Which is what he did in the middle of 1992 when he realised he was losing the desire to push to the maximum. Mears made the decision to retire from racing at the height of his powers, an uncommon and sage decision from one of the greatest oval racers we’ve ever seen.

This weekend should be quite a thrash at Indianapolis as everyone who failed last weekend to make the field for this year’s 92nd Indy 500 tries to take one of the remaining twenty-two places in the starting line-up. Chip Ganassi’s drivers and team put on a great show last Saturday to beat Team Penske and Andretti-Green Racing to this year’s Indy 500 pole. Scott Dixon (below) and Dan Wheldon qualified one-two with a pair of mid and late-afternoon second attempts which pushed Ryan Briscoe to the outside of the front row ahead of team-mate Helio Castroneves who will start the race from the inside of row two.

This was Dixon’s eleventh IRL pole but his first at Indy and the first time a Ganassi car has been on the pole at Indy since Bruno Junqueira (below) turned the trick in 2002. The team’s one-two sweep also was a bit of redemption for Ganassi’s team after enduring an unhappy pole day last year.

A disappointed Andretti-Green team couldn’t hit the right combination for qualifying but the team’s four cars will still start fifth (Danica Patrick – below), sixth (Tony Kanaan), seventh (Marco Andretti), and ninth (Hideki Mutoh). With last Sunday’s rainout only the first day’s eleven qualifiers are set for the 92nd Indy 500. The other three are Panther Racing’s Vitor Meira in ninth, Vision’s Ed Carpenter in tenth with Luczo-Dragon’s Tomas Scheckter completing the first day’s qualifiers. Only eight other drivers made full, four-lap qualifying runs on the rain-shortened opening weekend at Indianapolis and despite the unification of Indy car racing it will be a struggle to fill the field with thirty-three reputable cars and drivers.

Meanwhile, Ganassi’s team appears in good shape to make a serious run at winning its first Indy 500 in eight years, since Juan Montoya dominated the race back in 2000. Dixon was second last year, of course, and Wheldon finished fourth in ’06, his first year with Ganassi’s team. Ganassi’s managing director Mike Hull (below with Scott Dixon) compares the working partnership enjoyed by Dixon and Wheldon to the team’s great days ten years ago with Alex Zanardi and Jimmy Vasser.

“Zanardi and Vasser were meant for each other at that point in time, and I think Dixon and Wheldon are meant for each other at this point in time,” Hull remarked. “They aren’t anything alike, except for one common thread – they both want to be better today than they were yesterday. They haven’t lost sight of where they came from and they don’t feed off each other. They learn from each other. Their diversity in approach is probably a benefit. That’s certainly helped us in the past, like with Zanardi and Vasser.

“The more unselfish you can be as a team-mate, or for that matter, a team member, the more your eyes are open each day to learning. And that’s what Scott and Dan have in common. If they can continue down that path, no matter what they do with their lives, they can look back and say they achieved a lot, and that’s where they are as two people racing for us today. Their driving styles are a bit different, but they’ve learned to compare their styles to understand how to help each other.”

Hull says Dixon and Wheldon (above) have learned to drive their cars loose with the tail out in qualifying.

“In order to achieve a really fast lap at Indianapolis it takes a lot of experience,” Hull observes. “You can give somebody the setup that Chip Ganassi Racing had on Saturday afternoon and the driver may be able to drive the race car, but can he drive the car across the short chutes the right way to get the speed that he needs? Scott and Dan have got to the point in their careers where they can do that and they’re doing it together and that compounds your ability to get to the next level.”

As Dixon, Wheldon and the other top eleven qualifiers prepared this week for May 25th’s 500-mile race, the rest of the field – all the former Champ Car teams included – have been preoccupied with simply finding the speed necessary to make the race. Don’t expect any of them to come close to challenging the established IRL teams at Indianapolis this year.

The opening weekend of qualifying for this year’s 92nd Indianapolis 500 takes place this weekend. Favourites for the pole must be Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon who have been the men to beat on oval tracks so far this year in Chip Ganassi’s pair of Dallara-Hondas. Other pole contenders include 2001 and ‘02 race winner Helio Castroneves and new team-mate Ryan Briscoe with Team Penske, and Tony Kanaan, Marco Andretti (above) and Danica Patrick (below) at Andretti-Green Racing.

Thanks to the unification of IndyCar racing thirty-four drivers are entered at Indianapolis this year and the field is a little stronger than in recent years. On the other hand, the previous two winners Dario Franchitti and Sam Hornish are missing from the field as they have moved their careers, for better or worse, to NASCAR. The only previous winners entered this year are Wheldon, Castroneves and Buddies Rice and Lazier.

Five Brits are entered – 2005 winner Wheldon, Darren Manning, Justin Wilson, Jay Howard and Alex Lloyd. Wilson, Howard and Lloyd are rookies, although Wilson has some oval experience from his four years in Champ Car and is the number one driver of course, at Newman/Haas/Lanigan, replacing Sebastien Bourdais in the team’s McDonald’s car.

This has been a tough week for Newman/Haas/Lanigan because the team’s most experienced and respected man Davey Evans was brutally murdered in an Indianapolis bar last Saturday night. Evans, 63, had worked for Carl Haas’s race team for forty years, going back to the original Can-Am and Formula 5000 series. Born in Sudbury-on-Thames, Evans started his working life in 1959 as a teen-aged engineering apprentice with HWM Motors. He moved on to Maranello Concessionaires before finding work at Lola Cars and then becoming a key man in America in Haas’s Can-Am and Formula 5000 teams before the creation in 1983 of the Newman/Haas CART team.

For many years Davey worked at Lola during the winters building Haas’s cars. Evans was an old-school artisan who could construct almost anything. He was not only Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing’s most experienced crewman, but also probably the longest-serving man in the contemporary IndyCar garage area.

“I have a tough time accepting it and I’m sure everyone else feels the same way,” Mario Andretti commented. “It’s such a waste of a wonderful life. For some meaningless human being to take another life that meant so much is a total travesty. There are very few people that I’ve known in my life who you could say, ‘I don’t think this guy had an enemy in the world.’ All the years that I’ve known and worked with him, whether it was with Carl’s Can-Am team or through Formula 5000 to all the years with Newman/Haas, Davey was always there with a smile, always kind. What can you say? He was a friend for life.”

Two memorial services were held in Indianapolis this week for Evans as many who knew him paid their respects to one of the sport’s most-liked men, fated to lose his life in deeply tragic circumstances.