IndyCar: Saturday Report from the Hondy Indy Toronto
It is day two of the events here at Exhibition Place in Toronto, Ontario. The weather was perfect yesterday and will continue today with sunshine and temperatures in the mid-70s by qualifying time for the NTT INDYCAR Series this afternoon.
Free Fan Friday and beautiful weather brought out the fans yesterday. The NASCAR Pinty’s Series had their race at 4 pm. Two former IndyCar drivers, Andrew Ranger and Alex Tagliani run that series and finished second and fifth respectively.
With the first practice session in the books, the IndyCar drivers were pretty happy to be back in Toronto. Battling the bumps and patches seemed to highlight the conversation at the end of the day.
Simon Pagenaud, the 2019 winner of this race, was quite pleased with his second place time in practice yesterday. AR1 asked him his thoughts on the track conditions and driving with the aeroscreen for the first time on this track.
“We started the weekend off the right way. It is a really good track for me. It highlights all my qualities as a driver. ”
“The character of the place is the bumps and the patches and this is what makes this track so interesting, I welcome everything the track throws at us. This is one place I enjoy the most. I have nothing negative to say.”
“It was hot in the car before the aero screen. Now the air is much better than it was in the beginning. When we are behind the safety car, it is a bit hotter. Because we have less air. But running is OK.”
Graham Rahal, driver of the number 15 United Rentals Rahal Letterman Lanigan entry, was third fastest in practice yesterday. This was his best practice result this season which he gave credit to a test session in Sebring the team had after the Mid-Ohio race.
“Yeah, I thought it was a good start for us. To be back here feels great. Such passionate fans, always has been. Surprised when I strapped in, looked at the last turn to see how full the stands were. Thank you to everybody for coming out.”
“It felt good to just be competitive again, to be honest. Right away from the first run I saw Felix went quickest, but I felt deep down that we had that sort of pace. The next round we were able to put it together a little more, got P1 for a minute. Felt good to have a car underneath me. Felt like I could attack a little bit.”
Rahal continued on track conditions. “Yeah, I think it’s quite similar. I mean, it’s bumpy. Six to eight, like through the seven kink for me, with the new patches, there was a bunch more movement and stuff. ”
“Here you’ve always had to be very aware of placement, trying to avoid bumps and things like that. I think from ’19.”
“Even actually the aeroscreen, I mean, I think we went quicker. I think we as a team went quicker than we did in P1 or 2 last year, three years ago, without the aeroscreen. I feel now maybe we’re all just numb to it. I’m not sure.”
Josef Newgarden, driver of the number 2 Team Penske Hitachi entry, was the fastest Chevy driver with a result of fifth on the charts. The American explained the strategy for his team after posting the fastest practice time for Team Penske.
” Pretty good start for us. Didn’t really know what to expect, to be quite honest with you. It’s obviously been two years. Across our three cars, we had some different plans of attack. We all had sort of an idea of what we thought was going to happen today. It was very interesting to get out there and see what the track has been like after two years, two harsh winters.”
“It was actually I thought pretty good grip. I was really surprised. The balance was more secure than I thought it was going to be. So not too dissimilar to ’19. I think it’s bumpier. There’s definitely a couple of sections maybe we can grind down to help with some of the bumps. They’re not in corners. The place I noticed the most was between six and eight, there’s a huge bump on the middle part of the straight.”
“Other than that it was smooth. I was actually really happy with my car. I thought towards the end of the session we got it really close, did a couple positive changes. I feel really good about going into tomorrow. Hopefully that bodes well for the weekend. Feeling relatively strong with the Hitachi Chevy car.”
The second practice session for the IndyCars is this morning at 10 am. The Firestone Fast Six Qualifying session is scheduled for 2 pm.
Stay tuned for more updates from the track.
Lucille Dust reporting live from Toronto