All Colton Herta needs to do now is complete the weekend sweep of the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto.
Herta has been the fastest NTT INDYCAR SERIES driver in each of this weekend’s sessions so far at Exhibition Place, capping Saturday with a pole-winning run in the No. 26 Gainbridge Honda of Andretti Global with Curb-Agajanian.
Herta bested Andretti Global teammate Kyle Kirkwood by just over a tenth of a second to take the 14th NTT P1 Award of his career. Herta’s lap of 59.5431 seconds earned him his second pole in this event, the other coming in 2022. He finished second in that race.
SEE: Qualifying Results
This was Herta’s third pole of the season, but he has yet to convert one into a race win. In fact, the last time Herta went to victory lane was in May 2022. For a driver of his caliber, that’s too long of a drought.
“We just need to (do) the same,” Herta said of maintaining his advantage on the 11-turn, 1.786-mile temporary street circuit. “This (car) has been a rocket ship all weekend (and) really has (been) the past few races. Luck hasn’t turned our way for a win yet, and I’m hoping it’s here tomorrow.”
The 85-lap race is set for 1 p.m. ET (Peacock, INDYCAR Radio Network). Herta has finished second and third in the past two Toronto races and finished seventh as a rookie in 2019.
Kirkwood gave Andretti Global a sweep of the front row with a lap of 59.6735 seconds in the No. 27 AutoNation Honda. Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist earned the third starting position to give Honda a 1-2-3 look at the green flag. Given the technical alliance between Andretti Global and Meyer Shank Racing, that’s also a top-three sweep for that group.
MSR’s David Malukas also earned a spot in the Firestone Fast Six, and he will start sixth in the No. 66 AutoNation/Arctic Wolf Honda.
Theo Pourchaire had an even more dramatic day, replacing the injured Alexander Rossi (broken right thumb) despite having never competed on the track being used this weekend. Pourchaire was in his native France when Rossi’s car hit the tire barrier in Turn 8 in Friday’s practice, and he had to make a quick trans-Atlantic trip. He boarded the first of two flights shortly after midnight ET and arrived in the paddock about an hour before qualifying. Remarkably, his best lap (of nine) was less than 1.1 seconds from transferring to the second round.
Another happy driver was Agustin Canapino, who qualified the No. 78 Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet in the highest position – 10th – of his two-year career. Canapino had never reached the second round of qualifying.
Series leader Alex Palou (No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda) will start 18th in the 27-car field after being penalized in qualifying for impeding Pato O’Ward and his No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet in the second group. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver disagreed with the penalty, insisting there were “three cars in front of me – I couldn’t really go anywhere.”
Palou won’t be the only championship contender starting the race in deep in the pack. O’Ward stands third in the standings, and he will start 14th. Scott Dixon, a four-time winner of this event who is fourth in points, will line up 15th in the No. 9 PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda. That makes three of the top four in the standings starting in the back half of the field. Will Power, who trails Palou by 35 points, will start ninth in the No. 12 Verizon Business Team Penske Chevrolet. He is a three-time Toronto winner.
Hunter McElrea’s first series qualifying effort ended just minutes into the session when his No. 18 Courtesy Corporation Honda of Dale Coyne Racing went into the Turn 8 tire barrier. Last year’s runner-up in INDY NXT by Firestone will start Sunday’s race from the 25th position – he had been 16th in the morning practice.
This is the last of the series’ four street circuit races this season. O’Ward won the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding while Dixon won the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach and the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear. After this weekend, five races remain to determine the series champion, and four of them will be on oval tracks.
For the first time this weekend, drivers are allowed to regenerate and deploy stored energy after INDYCAR updated hybrid unit procedures. The energy recovery system that adds up to 60 additional horsepower in spurts was introduced earlier in the month and has been used on a road course at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and on an oval at Iowa Speedway. This is the first time the hybrid technology has been used on a street circuit.