The fourth and final street circuit event of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES season is ahead with Sunday’s Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto (1 p.m. ET, Peacock, INDYCAR Radio Network).
Last year in Toronto, Honda swept the top three finishing positions around the 1.786-mile street circuit at Exhibition Place and has done the same in the last two street races of the 2024 season at Long Beach and Detroit.
Can Chevrolet mount a charge this weekend after scoring five combined podium finishing positions among the six available during the Hy-Vee INDYCAR Race Weekend at Iowa Speedway across the two 250-lap races?
Among the last 13 street course events, Chevrolet has produced four wins from four different drivers. Scott McLaughlin won the 2022 season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding, Josef Newgarden won that season’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach while Will Power won the 2022 race at Belle Isle Park, the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear.
Dating to the 2022 race in Toronto, Honda has produced nine street circuit victories in the last 10 races. The season-opening victory on the streets of St. Petersburg by Pato O’Ward in his No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet is the only outlier.
Favorites
Josef Newgarden (No. 2 Hitachi Team Penske Chevrolet)
Newgarden qualified first, third and third, respectively, on street circuits this season so the speed is there despite his 18.66 average finishing position this season on them. At Toronto, the Team Penske driver is a two-time winner and has two top-five finishes in his last three starts.
Scott Dixon (No. 9 PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda)
Dixon’s starting position improved in all three street starts this season going form 11th at St. Petersburg to eighth in Long Beach to fifth at Detroit. He won two of those three (Long Beach, Detroit) and was seventh in the other leaving him with a series-leading third-place average finish. At Toronto, Dixon has four wins and nine top-three finishes in 15 starts including his last four finishes being first, second, first and fourth, respectively. This season, Dixon has six top-six finishes in the last eight races.
Alex Palou (No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda)
Like teammate Dixon, Palou has seen an improvement in street course qualifying this season, going from 13th to sixth to second, respectively, in starting spots. He qualified 22nd and 15th, respectively, in two Toronto starts but climbed through the field to finish sixth and second in those races. This season, Palou has two top-four finishes in three street course starts and rides into Toronto with three top-two finishes in the last four races overall.
Colton Herta (No. 26 Gainbridge Honda)
He is arguably the top street course qualifier this season with an average starting position of third, including an NTT P1 Award in Detroit. Herta has two top-three finishes in three Toronto starts, including both consecutively and two podium finishes in three street course starts this season.
Kyle Kirkwood (No. 27 AutoNation Honda)
Kirkwood has two NTT INDYCAR SERIES wins – both on street circuits coming in 2023 at Long Beach and Nashville. He and Herta are tied with Pato O’Ward for the third-most street course victories since the start of the 2022 season. This season, Kirkwood has an average finish of seventh on street courses, improving his finish three spots each race. He went from 10th in St. Petersburg to seventh in Long Beach to fourth in Detroit. If that trend continues, a win is on the horizon.
Sleepers
Alexander Rossi (No. 7 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet)
Three top-10 finishes in as many street course starts this season, including a fifth-place effort at Detroit, has Rossi tied with Kirkwood for the second-best average finishing position (seventh) on street courses this season. Rossi has three top-eight finishes in his last five Toronto attempts, too.
Graham Rahal (No. 15 United Rentals Honda)
Rahal boasts five top-10 finishes in his last seven Toronto starts, including a fourth-place result in 2022.
Marcus Ericsson (No. 28 Delaware Life Honda)
Ericsson finished 23rd in the season-opening race at St. Petersburg but he qualified sixth and was running toward the front before a mechanical issue. At Long Beach and Detroit, Ericsson finished fifth and second, respectively. Ericsson has three street course victories and three different tracks, but none of which at Toronto. Maybe that changes Sunday. Those three wins rank second behind Dixon and his four street course wins since 2020. Ericsson has a top-10 finish in all but one race since June 2 at Detroit.
Christian Lundgaard (No. 45 Hy-Vee Honda)
The site of his first and only NTT INDYCAR SERIES victory, Lundgaard (second from left in photo above joined by Kyle Kirkwood, Felix Rosenqvist and Marcus Ericsson) hasn’t finished where he would have liked in 2024 on these types of tracks coming home 18th, 23rd and 11th, respectively. But, in two Toronto starts, he finished eighth and first.
Felix Rosenqvist (No. 60 AutoNation/SiriusXM Honda)
He has been strong on street tracks this season qualifying on the front row twice and finishing fifth, ninth and eighth, respectively. Rosenqvist has also finished fifth, third and 10th, at Toronto. This adds up to a potentially strong outing this weekend.