Rain washed out Sunday's second scheduled day of time trials for the 92nd Indianapolis 500, leaving the final 22 positions in the 33-car field to be filled next Saturday.

One day after New Zealand's Scott Dixon captured the pole position for the 25 May race, Indianapolis Motor Speedway officials called off the session early due to rain, which also played havoc with practice ahead of weekend qualifying.

Showers washed out Wednesday and Thursday practice sessions and halted Friday's session more than three hours early at the 2.5-mile (4km) oval, leaving minimal preparation time for qualifying for the top 11 grid positions.

Practice will resume on Wednesday ahead of next Saturday's session, where the last rows will be filled.

Next Sunday's final time trials session will see unqualified cars try to bump their way into the lineup by completing a four-lap qualifying run in a faster time than the slowest qualified car.

Dixon took the inside front row spot Saturday and was joined in the front row for the Indy 500 by English team-mate Dan Wheldon and Australian Ryan Briscoe.

Two-time winner Helio Castroneves and fellow Brazilian Tony Kanaan are on the ends of row two, surrounding American Danica Patrick, who became the first woman to win a major auto series race last month at an Indy-car race in Japan.

Marco Andretti, the 2006 Indy 500 runner-up and US grandson of legend Mario Andretti, joined Brazil's Vitor Meira and Japan's Hideki Mutoh in row three with American Ed Carpenter and South Africa's Tomas Scheckter taking the last two spots on offer Saturday.

AFP