IRL: Indy 500: Day nine summary

Dixon Fastest as Rain Cuts Practice Short at Indianapolis

INDIANAPOLIS, Wednesday, May 19, 2004 -- Practice for the 88th Indianapolis 500 ended 30 minutes early today because of rain at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Defending IndyCar® Series champion Scott Dixon was fastest at 220.576 mph in the No. 1T Target Chip Ganassi Racing Panoz G Force/Toyota/Firestone.

"The Hondas are strong still," Dixon said. "That was something we thought was going to happen. We didn't really have too much on-track stuff today. We tried to do some back-to-back stuff this morning on the close to qualifying setup to see if we had sort of stepped on ourselves there. Generally, we didn't find much. I think a lot of other people did a lot of running."

Most the 26 qualified drivers in the field turned laps on a busy day on the 2.5-mile oval as priorities turned from qualifying to race set-ups. Dixon turned his fast lap just before noon, as many teams took advantage of favorable conditions early in the day.

The Panoz G Force chassis ruled the day as Honda-powered rookie Kosuke Matsuura turned in the second fastest lap at 219.417 mph, followed by Roger Yasukawa and Adrian Fernandez.

Rookie Mark Taylor was unhurt in a practice crash earlier today. His No. 2T Menards/Johns Manville Dallara/Chevrolet/Firestone suffered light damage after hitting the SAFER Barrier in Turn 2.

<pre> FASTEST DRIVERS OF THE DAY Pos. Car Name C/E/T Speed 1 1T Scott Dixon G/T/F 220.576 mph 2 55T Kosuke Matsuura G/H/F 219.417 mph 3 16T Roger Yasukawa G/H/F 219.173 mph 4 5T Adrian Fernandez G/H/F 219.171 mph 5 3T Helio Castroneves D/T/F 218.706 mph

FASTEST NON-QUALIFIED DRIVER Pos. Car Name C/E/T Speed 1 25 Marty Roth D/T/F 212.292 mph

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