Dixon paces Indy practice

In what was by far the busiest of the nine sessions so far, 25 cars combined for 1,812 laps Wednesday. With qualifying out of the way for all but a few teams - none of which practiced on Wednesday - the focus for those already in the race turned to race set-ups, long runs, traffic work, pit stops and back-up cars.

Scott Dixon posted the fastest lap of the day, pushing the his Target Chip Ganassi Racing Toyota-powered Panoz G Force T-car to 220.576mph, more than 1mph faster than his qualifying average. Kosuke Matsuura, Roger Yasukawa and Adrian Fernandez each posted laps over 219mph.

"We didn't really have too much on-track stuff," said Dixon, who completed 49 laps. "We tried to do some back-to-back testing. Generally we didn't find much, so we didn't stay out very long. There wasn't really much today. Other people did a lot of running, but we didn't. It's hard to schedule much out because of the weather. The clouds came in and messed things up for us."

None of the remaining cars that have yet to qualify for the race - including the No. 98 Curb/Agajanian/Beck Motorsports Dallara and Grey Ray's No. 13 Access Motorsports G Force - surfaced during Wednesday's sessions. Their absence left just three practice days for the field to prepare to reach the traditional 33-car starting field during Sunday's final day of qualifying.

For those drivers already in the race, Wednesday's practice session was a workout, even though it started late and ended early because of rain. Ed Carpenter led the lap list with 127 in his Red Bull Cheever Racing Dallara. Matsuura did 111 laps in the No. 55T Super Aguri Fernandez Racing G Force; Darren Manning did 107 laps in the No. 10T Target Chip Ganassi Racing G Force; and Tony Kanaan did 103 laps in the No. 11T Andretti Green Racing Dallara.

Mark Taylor had the only incident of the day, losing control of his Panther Racing Dallara-Chevrolet in turn one around 1 p.m. local time. He was not injured, and the car was not seriously damaged.

"We were just working on race stuff," Taylor said. "You try to work with cars in front of you, and we hadn't gotten quite enough downforce in the car. It was only a light brush with the wall, so it shouldn't take too long to fix. We should be able to get back out there."

The fastest 11 laps during Wednesday's session were recorded by 'T' cars. Pole winner Buddy Rice, who qualified the No. 15 Rahal Letterman Racing Honda/G Force at 222.024 mph on Saturday, worked exclusively with the back-up car, circling the track 96 times in the No. 15T.

Honda took the top seven qualifying positions for the 500, leaving Toyota and Chevy scrambling to find speed. Dixon's practice burst came after a disappointing qualifying run of 219.319mph that left him in the 13th starting position.

"Toyota is working pretty hard to get us something better by the time the race comes around," Dixon said. "They got kicked in the ass pretty bad in qualifying. Normally if an engine has more horsepower, it burns a lot more fuel. Hopefully we might have that on them."

Robby Gordon continued his pursuit of success in two types of racing, posting 46 laps in the Robby Gordon Motorsports Dallara that crashed last week. Gordon, who announced on Tuesday that he has parked his NASCAR Busch Series car for Sunday's race at Nazareth, is focusing on the Indy/Charlotte double.