"It's been a tough day for us," the Kiwi reflected, "We were pretty decent yesterday, but we had some more rain, which shortened that. Today, we just really didn't have the speed. We worked a lot on race set-up to try to help the car because I had some issues with the rear end but, even when we went to new tyres, we didn't seem to pick up much speed."
Dixon's Target Chip Ganassi Racing team-mate Dan Wheldon will start third, Tony Kanaan fourth, Ryan Briscoe fifth and Danica Patrick sixth, ahead of team-mate Mutoh.
"I was ready for the qualifying session and was very confident to do well, so I am disappointed that it got cancelled," the Japanese driver admitted, "I wanted to start from the front, so starting seventh is a bit frustrating for me. However, all I can do is to do well in the race, so I hope it will be a clear day tomorrow."
Marty Roth and Bruno Junqueira, meanwhile, will watch the race from pit-lane, having suffered weekend-ending accidents in practice. Both Roth's #25 car and Junqueira's #18 car were damaged too heavily to repair before the race after suffering parts failures which led to them spinning into the SAFER Barrier in turn two.
"It's a major disappointment," Roth asighed, "We worked so hard to get a good race car, and I think we made a really good one. It was a struggle at first, but I think we had a really good race car. We had a rear pushrod break going into corner one, and it was all over at that point. The damage is pretty extensive. We can't fix it for the race. We'll be looking for Richmond now, and we'll have our eyes on John Andretti for the weekend."
Junqueira's crash also collected Wheldon, who will complete the rest of his meeting in Ganassi's back-up car. Milka Duno, who crashed during the open test on Friday will also race her back-up car.
