Missing pole wouldn't worry Hornish

The American Penske racer was fastest on each of the opening three days before rain limited running on the final practice day and forced the postponement of both days of scheduled qualifying.

The grid for this year's race will now predominately be settled on Saturday, with traditional 'bumping' at the rear of the field occurring on Sunday.

Hornish believes that although he has a strong chance of pole, it is now more important to use the practice days building up to qualifying to work on race set-up rather than qualifying speed.

"The plans have definitely changed a lot after the rain that we had in the first weekend of qualifying," Hornish said. "We really have to just kind of go out there and work on race set-up this week.

"It's obviously going to give some people an opportunity to catch up a little bit to us in the speed department.

"Being the fastest every day we ran, then the second fastest on Sunday, we're real happy with that. We're focused on what we're doing.

"We're here to win the race. We're going to work real hard on getting our race car set up good for the race two Sundays from now.

"When it comes time to qualify, we'll try to put it in the show. I think we have an awesome chance of going out there and maybe being able to get the pole.

"I don't think we'll be too disappointed if we don't. We just have to figure out how to win this race. I'd rather win the race than win the pole."

Double IRL champion Hornish has never won the sport's showpiece race, and admits that just competing in the race was his life-long dream.

"The Indy 500 means everything," he added. "That's why I started racing, to someday be able to compete in the Indy 500. Now that I've been able to do that, after I did that the first time, I had to raise my goal to someday hopefully winning it.

"I think there's a great opportunity with Penske Racing to be able to do that. Roger [Penske] has won 13 times. He's the guy that knows how to get it done here at the Speedway."