INDIANAPOLIS — Indy Racing League president Brian Barnhart cautioned the 33 starters in tomorrow's Indianapolis 500 to be patient at the start and to maintain their spacing as they approach the green flag.

"Don't crowd the other drivers in front, beside or behind you. Take care of yourself and execute a clean start," he told them at the public drivers meeting Saturday. "You may not pass prior to the start-finish line on the initial start, and you need to be ready to brake in turn one if you have to."

The Chevrolet Corvette pace car driven by two-time winner Emerson Fittipaldi will come off the fourth turn before the start at 105-110 mph, Barnhart said, with front-row starters Scott Dixon, Dan Wheldon and Ryan Briscoe right behind.

In contrast to most of the month, Sunday's weather forecast calls for sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-to-upper 70s.

"It's supposed to be warmer than any day we've had this month," Barnhart warned. "You'll need to adjust downforce levels and prepare for a hot, slick race track. You have several pit stops as opportunities to improve the handling of your car. Be patient. Five hundred miles is a long day, not a sprint race."

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FREEDOM 100: Dillon Battistini of England started from the pole and held off Richard Antinucci in the final seven laps to win the Freedom 100 in the IRL's developmental Indy Lights Series on Saturday. It was the second win in five races this season for the series rookie.

"It means a lot. It's the best place to come and win," Battistini said.

"I was just focusing on going as fast as I could, but you can't help looking in the mirror a bit. All I could see was a lot of cars around me," he said.

Antinucci, nephew of former Indy 500 winner Eddie Cheever, started sixth but moved up to second after the final caution for debris on the track. He cut Battistini's lead to just over .1 second with three laps to go but couldn't pass him and finished .246 behind.

"It was a good position to be in the last lap, getting alongside him and trying to make a run," Antinucci said. "Once we got alongside him, we just died in open air."

With second place, Antinucci moved into the series points lead 179-176 over Battistini, who started the race third in the standings.

Wade Cunningham, the 2006 Freedom 100 winner, was third in the 27-car field, followed by Robbie Pecorari and rookie driver Ana Beatriz. Jeff Simmons, the only driver who also will race in the Indy 500 on Sunday, finished eighth; Al Unser III, the son and grandson of former Indy winners, was 11th; Arie Luyendyk Jr., son of another former Indy 500 winner, was 14th; and J.R. Hildebrand, who came into the race with the series points lead, finished 24th.

Battistini led almost all of the 40-lap, 100-mile race. James Davison, who started second, passed him briefly on the fourth lap, but Battistini regained the lead the next time around and held it the rest of the way except for a brief pass by Cunningham on lap 16.

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BUSY DRIVER: The busiest driver in practice for Sunday's race was rookie Will Power, whose two laps in Friday's abbreviated final session pushed his total for the month to 561. In all, 38 drivers turned 13,451 laps in practice, which was cut almost in half because of rain over the past three weeks.

"My first time on the track was a real eye-opener, to be honest," Power said Saturday. "It's a really unique track. It's the fastest I've ever been. It's not like your normal oval."

Among those with the fewest laps (214) was NASCAR driver John Andretti, a late replacement for rookie Jay Howard with Roth Racing.

"We had a totally different setup on the car," Andretti said of the adjustments for the cold, wet weather. "I don't know if we have it right. We certainly tried to build as much grip in it mechanically. It still seems pretty good."

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ROOKIES READY: Thanks in part to the February merger of the former Champ Car series into the IRL, the race Sunday includes 11 rookies, the greatest number of first-year starters since 13 were in the lineup in 1997.

One of the rookies is Graham Rahal, who made the switch with the Newman/Haas/Lanigan team and at 19 is the youngest driver in the field.

"I don't think anybody expected it to come together as quickly as it did," he said of the unification of the two open-wheel series. "It was a big relief for everybody, and we're thrilled to be here."

Rahal, son of former Indy winner and team owner Bobby Rahal, had been to the race many times with his father — but just to watch. He finished fifth in Champ Car as a rookie last year and won his IRL debut at St. Petersburg, Fla., in April, becoming the youngest winner of a major open-wheel race in the U.S.

Among the other rookies is Brazilian Mario Moraes, the second-youngest driver in the lineup and two weeks older than Rahal. The others are Hideki Mutoh of Japan, who took Dario Franchitti's spot with Andretti Green Racing and was the fastest rookie qualifier, along with Justin Wilson, Alex Lloyd, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Will Power, Oriol Servia, E.J. Viso, Enrique Bernoldi and Jaime Camara.

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SPARK PLUGS: Broadcaster and race historian Bob Jenkins received the Bob Russo Founders Award from the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association on Saturday. Jenkins, one of the first announcers hired by ESPN when the cable network debuted in 1979, later served as host and play-by-play announcer for the Indy Racing League and the Indy 500. ... Car owner Roger Penske, whose drivers have won a record 14 Indy 500 races and 14 Indy poles, received the U.S. Auto Club's Roger McCluskey Award of Excellence during the annual drivers meeting.