Rain cancels second day qualifying

The weather has disrupted proceedings all week at Indy, with two days of practice already lost to wet conditions.

Morning showers forced the pre-qualifying practice hour to be cancelled earlier today, and with the weather looking unlikely to improve, IMS officials announced shortly after the scheduled start of qualifying that the day's planned six-hour session will not take place.

Positions 12 to 22 on the Indy 500 grid had been due to be set today, but these will now be allocated at the same time as the final 11 places in next Saturday's session.

Scott Dixon secured pole position in yesterday's qualifying, which decided the first 11 starting positions, with his Ganassi teammate Dan Wheldon and Penske's Ryan Briscoe completing the front row.

All of the Champ Car converts, Vision Racing's AJ Foyt IV and Rahal-Letterman driver Ryan Hunter-Reay (who crashed yesterday) were among the leading contenders who were looking to secure their place in the field in today's qualifying session, but must now wait another week.

"It's quite frustrating not being able to run, but that's how it is," said Newman Haas Lanigan's Justin Wilson, who narrowly missed the 11th position on Saturday, as did his teammate Graham Rahal.

"You can't change the weather. We both realise how close we came to getting into the top 11, and that's quite an achievement considering where we started out. We are slowly making progress."

Davey Hamilton, who is making another one-off return with Vision Racing, had similar feelings, but said there was nothing he would have done differently on Pole Day had he known day two would be rained off.

"It's pretty frustrating to have missed the top 11 by less than a tenth of a second and then have day two rained out and not be assured of a spot on the grid yet," Hamilton said. "We gave it all we had. I can't look back and say we should have done something different."

Practice will resume next Wednesday.