Montoya encouraged by practice pace

The Ganassi driver had been third fastest in Friday practice and looked set to have a shot at pole but an early qualifying draw and a loose car following set-up changes left him 32nd on the starting grid for Sunday's race.

However he topped the morning practice session, closely followed by his Ganassi teammates Dario Franchitti and Reed Sorenson in an unprecedented sweep for a squad that have struggled this year.

In the final practice session Sorenson topped the times early on but then Montoya moved up again to set the fastest time of the session as cooler track conditions allowed times to drop below the 30 second mark.

"We've been really good today," Montoya said. "We haven't made a lot of changes in race trim since we got here. The car feels really good. In qualifying, the car was way too loose. I don't think the rain delay helped us either because the track got a lot faster.

"From where we start tomorrow we've got a long race ahead of us. We just have to keep adding points. It's encouraging to see all the Ganassi cars running so much better."

Sorenson believes past experience from this track and recent testing has helped them to find a set-up that allows them to maintain better speed than their rivals through the corners on the low-banked track.

"The car seems to be carrying really good corner speed and that seems to be where our strong point is on the track," said Sorenson. "We were good here last year. We worked on dialing in our race trim set-up and the car reacted really well. We could be really good tomorrow."

Franchitti ended up finishing tenth in the final practice session, but was by far the fastest among the rookies. He hopes his and his team's pace allows them to translate their speed and what they learned in testing this week at Milwaukee into their best result of the season on Sunday.

"Finish where we start would be awesome," said Franchitti. "We'll see. We've just got to do the best we can, good pit stops and I've got to do a good job getting on and off pit road, race well and see what we can get."

Sorenson will lead the Ganassi cars in the field from sixth, followed by Franchitti in seventh, while Montoya will start Sunday's race from 32nd.