Greg Ray tames Brickyard

Ray claims his Dallara handles much better than his 1999 car, and that revelation should be cause for worry for his rivals. The Texan qualified second last year in a car that was not totally to his liking.

"The feel in the car is quite different here than it was in 1998 and '99," claimed Ray. "As I get happy and get in that comfort zone with the car - kind of that warm and fuzzy feeling there - we can get down to business on making the car go faster.

"I just look at it in the fact that we're trying real hard. The top priority is to win the race," he added.

Final qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 is on May 20th. Other drivers who are looking competitive for the pole are Scott Sharp and Eddie Cheever, the latter using the only Nissan Infiniti engine in a field full of Oldsmobile Aurora powered cars.

Veteran Cheever was placed third, while rookies Casey Mears and Guy Smith successfully passed their rookie evaluation test to make it through to qualifying, along with six other drivers.

Ray's top lap of the four days was timed at 222.833mph.