"Right now, the guys are back working on the McDonald's car, and they're just fine-tuning everything, setting everything up again, checking all the wing measurements, checking all the suspension components, the dampers we've changed slightly throughout the week - everybody is flat out. The engineers are studying the data to make sure that what we think we've learned is as right as we can get it before we can go back out on track again and validate that. The teams that are new here are going to be a step behind, but we've used these two days to catch up on some of the work that we're struggling to fit in. It's not as bad as if we were sitting around, twiddling our thumbs. We've used the time wisely. You spend the time polishing the car and cleaning up the edges. Anything you can do to get that tenth of a mile an hour which is going to make the difference on Saturday and Sunday."
Although the 'month of May' appears to stretch out ahead of the teams, there is only a week of practice before the first key moment. This Saturday [10 May] sees the drivers competing for the top eleven starting positions, including the PEAK Motor Oil Pole Award and it's $100,000 prize.
"I don't think it would be Indy if you didn't have weather,that's what makes this place so unique - you never know what you're going to get," series veteran and 500 winner Buddy Rice noted, "This track - its layout, the rules, the atmosphere - everything is unique. The whole thing about this place is speed. If you can find a couple of tenths of a mile per hour by sitting there and looking at the car and cleaning it up and doing what you can, you're going to do that.
![Helio Castroneves - Team Penske [pic credit: IRL/Jones]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/436613.jpg)
