Qualifying sets up the battle of the red cars at Richmond

As predictable as getting wet when it rains, qualifying on the short oval at Richmond International Speedway this afternoon revealed few surprises, as far as the first two rows anyway. Ganassi, Ganassi, Penske, Penske. This week's order of Franchitti, Dixon, Castroneves, Briscoe was a flip flop of last weekends Penske, Penske, Ganassi, Ganassi, or the week before's Ganassi, Penske, Ganassi, Penske. Looking at the times, it's clear that the Ganassi duo are the class of the field as far as set ups go, out pacing the rest of the field by a fairly sizable margin.

"I enjoy the short tracks," said Franchitti who is coming off of his second win of the season. "I enjoy the technique of racing on short ovals, the way you have to set the car up. Things come at you quick here. It's a really fun discipline of our series and I really enjoy it."

Franchitti's teammate, who sits just 3 points behind him in the championship standings, thought the pole was his.

"After some changes in practice, for a couple of laps we were just trying to feel the car out," said Dixon, who's third in the standings. "The car was really good and should have been closer to pole if not on pole and I kind of let that down. We have a good car for the race and fantastic with two cars on the front row and hopefully we can keep it that way at the end."

It isn't until you move on to rows three through six that eyebrows start to raise.

Row three is comprised of Graham Rahal, who continues to show improvement on the ovals compared to his outings last season and Rookie Raphael Matos who had his Luczo Dragon machine dialed in today to achieve his best oval start of the season.

Row four finds HVM driver E.J. Viso, who had the 7th fastest time of the day for his best showing on an oval this season as well, lining up along side Hideki Mutoh who also seems to be finding his stride mid-season.

Dreyer & Reinbold drivers Tomas Scheckter & Mike Conway continue to impress, lining up directly behind one another in rows five and six respectively.

Raising eyebrows for all the wrong reasons are some of the usually fast drivers who will be starting much further down in the line-up than anticipated or desired.

Dan Wheldon starts on the inside of row seven, Marco Andretti on the outside of row 8, Andretti's teammate Tony Kanaan, who is having an uncharacteristically bad run of luck lately, will line up on the inside of row nine, and Mario Moraes, who has been impressively keeping up with the front runners all season, finds himself at the back of the pack unable to find any speed all day.

"It's hard to gage were we really are since we only had four laps of practice today. I'm really disappointed," said Kanaan, who tried to remain upbeat. "I was looking forward to getting back to this track. I won the race from the pole last year, so I know we are capable of doing well here. We will regroup tonight after practice and see what we need to do to make the most out of the race tomorrow."

Jacques Lazier, who continues to pilot the Team 3G entry formerly driven by Stanton Barrett, will start last, so far off the pace he could be more of a hazard than a competitor.

Teams will get one more opportunity to fine tune their cars during a half hour practice this evening from 9-9:30pm, in conditions more similar to what they will be during Saturday night's race.

Pre-race get's underway at 8pm, with the green flag set to wave at 8:45pm.

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