DARREN MANNING was fastest in Sunday morning IndyCar practice at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with a lap of 223.486mph, which he pulled of at the end of the hour-long session.

Twelve cars were on track, eleven of which were Dallara chassis. JAQUES LAZIER ran the only Panoz car. AL UNSER JR had his T-car out also but didn't complete a lap.

VITOR MEIRA was second fastest, followed by KOSUKE MATSUURA, who had led much of the session. Fourth and fifth were the two Rahal Letterman drivers, SCOTT SHARP and JEFF SIMMONS, in that order.

There were no incidents.

All IndyCars run Honda engines, which are leased from the Japanese manufacturer. They are handed out by Indy Racing League officials in a double-blind draw. Only Honda knows the serial numbers and the performance parameters, ie horsepower. IRL hands the engines out to the teams. For the Indianapolis 500 month, the engines are refreshed every 1200 miles. For the rest of the IRL season, the engines are refreshed every 1400 miles. The teams also get 17 sets of Firestone Firehawk tyres for the month of May, all the same compound.

The second day of qualifying starts at noon and runs for six hours. There are 45 theoretical driver/car combinations in the designated order, starting with PJ JONES. However, Jones isn't at the track and, as he hasn't raced an IndyCar since last year's Indy 500, he would be required to run a 'refresher' course - which, in his case, would mean practice laps with IRL officials 'sort of' watching to see that there are no problems.

Of the 45 in the qualification order, eleven aren't here and/or haven't a driver designation. One driver, MILKA DUNO, is without a race car while her's is being repaired after Friday's crash during practice, so that takes out another two cars from the queue. Then take out the 19 T-cars and that leaves 16 drivers going for eleven slots for positions 12-23 in the 2007 Indy 500 line-up.