Indy 500 practice - day 4

Montoya and Vasser have two CART Championships and a bevy of wins between them, but are braving the rival series in order to compete for the greatest race in the sport - the Indianapolis 500 on the 28th May.

And it was only Sharp who stood in their way yesterday. The American set the fastest time this year at the 'Brickyard', as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is nicknamed, so far - 223.936 mph. Sharp's lap, the fastest of the event, was 14 one-hundredths of a second quicker than the previous best, set by Robby Gordon yesterday.

Sharp paid tribute to the team spirit displayed by his crew and that of team mate Mark Dismore:

"We weren't getting the type of results we wanted," he admitted. "We decided with only about an hour and a half left in the day that we wanted to make some big changes. Those guys (Dismore's crew) jumped right in on my car, in the middle of working on their car, to help make it so we could get it done. It really worked well for us."

CART outfit Ganassi team-mates, Juan Montoya and Jimmy Vasser were second and third fastest. Montoya was six one-hundredths of a second faster than Vasser, with a best lap of 222.102 mph, while Vasser averaged 221.773.

"The car is really good," said Montoya. "I am happy with the speed that we got in the half day we ran. We made some changes but didn't get a chance to get back out again. So we'll see how they run tomorrow."