Penske duo fastest in final practice

The Australian and his team-mate Helio Castroneves were in separate groups in the split session, and each emerged on top of their respective half-hour of running. Briscoe's 24.3977s time from the first session stood as the best of the afternoon, beating Castroneves' later effort by 0.0530s.

Thursday night pace-setter Dan Wheldon moved up to third for Panther late on. Ganassi's Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti took fourth and sixth, split by Mario Moraes (KV), another man to move up with his last run.

Newman/Haas/Lanigan got both cars in the top ten with Graham Rahal seventh and Robert Doornbos 10th. Ed Carpenter took eighth for Vision Racing, with Sarah Fisher an impressive fourth in session one in her self-run car. She ended up ninth in combined times.

With every other session and the race taking place in the evening, the hot afternoon conditions of final practice were of limited relevance. Andretti Green Racing therefore chose to leave Danica Patrick and Marco Andretti's cars in the paddock, having been happy with their set-ups last night, while their team-mates Tony Kanaan and Hideki Mutoh completed relatively few laps.

Pos  Driver             Team                 Time      Gap
 1.  Ryan Briscoe       Penske               24.3977s
 2.  Helio Castroneves  Penske               24.4507s  + 0.0530s
 3.  Dan Wheldon        Panther              24.4672s  + 0.0695s
 4.  Scott Dixon        Ganassi              24.4718s  + 0.0741s
 5.  Mario Moraes       KV                   24.4788s  + 0.0811s
 6.  Dario Franchitti   Ganassi              24.4819s  + 0.0842s
 7.  Graham Rahal       Newman/Haas/Lanigan  24.5031s  + 0.1054s
 8.  Ed Carpenter       Vision               24.5512s  + 0.1535s
 9.  Sarah Fisher       Fisher               24.5649s  + 0.1672s
10.  Robert Doornbos    Newman/Haas/Lanigan  24.5790s  + 0.1813s
11.  Justin Wilson      Coyne                24.6106s  + 0.2129s
12.  AJ Foyt IV         Foyt                 24.6487s  + 0.2510s
13.  Tony Kanaan        Andretti Green       24.6511s  + 0.2534s
14.  Alex Tagliani      Conquest             24.6570s  + 0.2593s
15.  EJ Viso            HVM                  24.6772s  + 0.2795s
16.  Mike Conway        Dreyer & Reinbold    24.7477s  + 0.3500s
17.  Raphael Matos      Luczo Dragon         24.7774s  + 0.3797s
18.  Ryan Hunter-Reay   Vision               24.8040s  + 0.4063s
19.  Jaques Lazier      3G                   24.8757s  + 0.4780s
20.  Tomas Scheckter    Dreyer & Reinbold    24.8940s  + 0.4963s
21.  Hideki Mutoh       Andretti Green       25.1336s  + 0.7359s
22.  Milka Duno         Dreyer & Reinbold    25.2691s  + 0.8714s
23.  Danica Patrick     Andretti Green
24.  Marco Andretti     Andretti Green