by CHRIS ESTRADA, Special to FOXSports.com

Updated: May 10, 2008, 4:44 PM EST 1 comment

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A look at the "rookie" list shows that six of them — Graham Rahal, Justin Wilson, Oriol Servia, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Will Power and Mario Dominguez — raced last season in either the IndyCar Series or Champ Car World Series. One of them, Hunter-Reay, is the reigning IRL rookie of the year. Two of them, Wilson and Enrique Bernoldi, have raced in Formula One.

With that in mind, the true rookie list consists of E.J. Viso, Mario Moraes, Jay Howard, Alex Lloyd, Jaime Camara and Hideki Mutoh. However, you can add Dominguez to that list since he's going for his first 500 start as well. Also, Howard, Lloyd, Camara and Mutoh have all raced the 2.5-mile oval in the Firestone Indy Lights development series.

No matter how you slice it, this is one of the deeper fields of Indy freshmen in some time. Monday's first practice session saw several rookies in the top half of the speed charts, led by Long Beach winner Power. He was part of the top 10 for much of the afternoon before a last-minute run by Danica Patrick knocked his lap of 223.550 mph down to 11th.

However, Power showed that if he continues to progress throughout the month, he may become one of the few rookies with a chance of contending. Right now, he's showing a methodical way of attacking the Brickyard.

"It was a good day considering we started off with pretty bad balance in the KV Racing Technology Aussie Vineyards Team Australia car,'' he said. "We were able to come back at the end of the day with very nice balance, very neutral. The KVRT team has just got to work on the little bits now ... try and find little bits of speed everywhere, because I want to get up there and try and qualify in that top 11 on Saturday."

Wilson, who went 12th on the charts Monday at 223.461 mph, is also adopting a steady pace in hopes of building up for a great run in qualifying on Saturday. However, he found himself fighting to come to grips with the track yesterday.

"I felt like we made a little bit of progress on the McDonald's car early in the session,'' he said. "I felt a little confused by the end of the day and was thinking we hadn't actually learned anything. I was hoping for more and hoping to get the car a bit more stable and more comfortable to drive, but we didn't manage to fix anything."

Indy can be a baffling track for any driver and with many of these rookies carrying a background in road and street courses, one would think that they'd be at an even bigger disadvantage. The newcomers are discovering, though, that Indy's unique turns actually play to what they know well. As a result of the four distinct corners, road racers can fall into a solid rhythm like they do on road courses.

Oriol Servia, Power's teammate at KV and the most experienced oval racer of the former Champ Car pilots, only had some testing laps with Walker Racing in 2002 as his Indy resume before going through rookie orientation this weekend. After his ROP laps on Sunday, he likened Turn 1 at Indy to the opening corner at legendary Road America.

"The corners are definitely closer to what would be, I don't know, Turn 1 at Elkhart (Lake, Wis.), than Homestead, I would say," he said. "'It's a combination of both — you have banking and you go in with a lot of speed, and there's a lot of things happening right away.

"At Homestead and other superspeedways, you're going really fast, but everything happens really slow in the corner. Here, everything comes to you really quick in Turn 1, you're breathing, 'OK, I'm through the turn,' and you're in Turn 2 right away, so it's definitely a different rhythm."

Hideki Mutoh has the speed to make a rookie breakthrough at the Brickyard. (Tom Strattman / Associated Press)

Servia was only 21st Monday in the first practice session at 221.883 mph, but while Indianapolis is a new track to him, he has plenty of time to nail down that rhythm before race day comes. Plus, his experience with speedways can serve as a reservoir of knowledge for oval novice Power. In turn, should Power be faster than his Spanish teammate; Servia can pick up better data off the Aussie and catch up to him in the coming weeks.

Another rookie with high expectations is Hideki Mutoh, the fourth driver for Andretti-Green Racing. Before he went out and ran 14th Monday in practice, the Japanese racer said that he was getting more comfortable with the Speedway in a bigger, faster IndyCar.

"The team gave me a great car, and I was really confident to drive it on the track and feel the downforce on the car," he said. "We can be faster ... so I'm really looking forward to driving and qualifying on Saturday."

While Mutoh may not be a contender for the pole, he certainly has a chance to qualify on the first weekend. As for 19-year-old wunderkind Graham Rahal, he's also looking to make sure he isn't forced to make the grid beyond this Sunday.

Rahal remains a bit down on speed, but he showed his talent once again by making a great save during practice on Tuesday.

"I think I had the save of the month," he said. "I came out of Turn 1, and the car had understeered there every single lap except for this one and the thing snapped on me. It was close. They showed it on the screens all over the track. The car snapped, and I had a full lock on the (steering wheel), and it just came back to me."

Out of all the rookies, Mutoh certainly has the best equipment under him and perhaps, the best team in the entire garage to guide him through the month of May. Rahal doesn't quite have that luxury yet, but N/H/L is getting closer and closer to regaining the form that helped them win four straight Champ Car titles with Sebastien Bourdais. On top of that, he's got his father Bobby, the 1986 Indy champ, to help him as well should he need it. Still, whether or not Rahal will have the speed to make some waves on race day is up in the air.

Looking at the rest of the class, Viso is out to not only prove that he can perform well at Indy, but also that he can be a good neighbor. His incident-riddled day at Kansas made him the target of sore post-race comments from a cadre of other drivers. So far, he's reminding people of a young Tomas Scheckter (who was one of those who complained about Viso on Sunday) — quick but prone to danger. Once his HVM Racing team figures out how to squeeze more speed out of the No. 33 car, will Viso develop a wild streak to go along with it?

Camara has already gone through some trouble at Indy after crashing in Monday's rookie practice, the first wreck of the month at IMS. However, his Firestone Indy Lights experience should pay off by helping him improve during the month. Camara won the Freedom 100 at the track in 2005 and ran third in that race in 2006 and 2007. FIL experience should also give benefits to Jay Howard and Alex Lloyd, the reigning series champion who won last year on the Indy oval.

Hunter-Reay has turned in decent performances this year at Homestead and Motegi (seventh at both tracks). His Rahal-Letterman Racing team seems to have climbed out of an epic three-year funk that came after Buddy Rice won the Indy 500 with them in 2004. While this isn't the same team that nearly took the title four years ago, it's safe to say that they still have some idea about how to go fast at the Brickyard, so keep an eye on their American driver.

Bernoldi raced on the Indy road course during his F1 days, but now he's trying to acclimate to the 2.5-mile rectangle. So far, he's been basking in the aura that surrounds this race course.

"It's really nice driving here, and I'm having a lot of fun," he said on Tuesday. "I can't say I enjoyed ovals that much until I came here. I like this place a lot. You really start understanding what Indianapolis is all about and why people say what they say about this place. It's great."

You can also count Moraes and Dominguez among the awestruck, with the latter calling his first laps at IMS on Monday "an absolute dream come true."

As for Moraes, he's continuing his process of learning high-speed oval racing after driving slower open-wheel cars in various South American and European feeder series. He was overwhelmed at the sheer size of Indianapolis.

"I was very excited when I arrived at the track for the first time,' he said on Monday. "I didn't realize how big everything was until I got there. Going down the front straightaway for the first time was incredible. All I could see was grandstands on either side of me and then at the last minute, you are turning into Turn 1 flat out. For my first time out here, I thought I did a pretty good job."

His Dale Coyne Racing team hopes for more of the same, as do the rest of the teams charged with guiding rookie drivers through the trials and tribulations that only Indianapolis can provide.

It's still early, but so far, the rookies are holding up.