By Austin Lawton, Staff Writer
A bumpy track, wild tire wear and fast Andretti Global cars set the stage for Sunday’s Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto.
The IndyCar series returns to Exhibition Place and the 11-turn, 1.786-mile street course for the 16th race since open-wheel racing in the United States re-unified in 2008. Last year, Colton Herta took the win from the pole for Andretti Global and returns in 2025, looking to go back-to-back.
Herta (59.8320) claimed his 16th career pole and third at Toronto, on Saturday, besting Alex Palou (01:00.1078) for the top spot and was the only driver to go under the one-minute bracket in qualifications. Following Palou was Marcus Armstrong (01:00.3535), Will Power (01:00.4519), Graham Rahal (01:00.8600) and Kyle Kirkwood (01:04.5308).
“I think we were extremely competitive on blacks,” Herta said after his pole run. “I felt like if we put on blacks, I could have been close to my red tire time. We’re fast on reds, but I feel we’re even more competitive on blacks. It was a stressful one, though. Really close to being knocked out in the first round. We had to make some adjustments on pit lane that worked beautifully and got us back into contention.”
SEE: Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto Starting Grid
Kirkwood, who has led the charge for Andretti this weekend, being fastest in both practice sessions, lost the rear of his No.27 Silver Gold Bull Honda in Turn 2, at the start of his final lap in qualifying. Kirkwood would abort the lap, but would settle for sixth as the clock ran out of time to make another attempt.
“We just gave away a pole, without a doubt,” Kirkwood told the media after his run. “I started the lap and the first time all weekend I got a huge snap. [The car] has been understanding and the one time I go through [Turn 2] when it matters for pole, it bottoms out and I have a huge snap. It’s unfortunate
“It feels like we’re throwing away poles left and right on street courses.”
While trying to contend with the Andretti duo of Herta and Kirkwood, the field will also wrestle with tire strategy on the bumpy Toronto streets. Firestone is bringing the green, alternate tire (as is custom for street courses), a tire that has been a preferred race tire on all the street courses.
This weekend, however, the green tire is wearing faster and graining. IndyCar is the only series running on Firestone tires this weekend, with Indy NXT by Firestone on an off weekend. The USF Championships are the only support series at the track, but run on Continental rubber.
Instead of prioritizing the green tire, teams strategized to make sure they had enough sets of black, primary tires for the race. Teams are allowed five sets of the blacks for the weekend and will have to make a three-stop strategy work for the 90-lap race on Sunday.
After Friday’s practice session, Power noted that the green tire “literally had that one prep lap and one lap to go.” and that sentiment proved true in qualifying as teams used their sets of green tires, with 17 teams opting to run green tires, new and used, throughout qualifying.
As far as how the green tire will perform in the race, Herta thinks the warmup at 9 a.m. eastern will give everyone a better idea.
“I think it depends on how long you can run the softs for,” Herta said. “That’s a big question mark. ‘Is it going to be four laps? Is it going to be 20 laps?’ I’m really not sure yet. It will be more of an answer after warm-up to what the race is really going to look like tomorrow. I think we have the ability to be fast on both. But I’m glad it’s the harder compound tire race because I think we’re really strong on those.”
On Friday, Power noted that a new bump appeared at the end of Turn 3, citing a strip of pavement in that section and gave the suggestion to grind it.
“Massive new bump at the end of the straight into three,” Power said on Friday. “It actually hurts. Right in the braking zone, boom. I think they honestly need to grind it tonight. It will hurt racing. Very apprehensive to go up the inside. They should grind it.”
Power got his wish as a patch of asphalt was applied overnight. Herta and Palou offered opposite reactions to the new patch of asphalt:
“It’s much better,” Herta said. “It was pretty brutal yesterday. I think for us, like, I didn’t really mind it because I think it adds character and whatnot. But it was on a limit. It was very aggressive. I think you saw quite a few guys make mistakes because of it. It’s a very difficult part of the track to be standing on the brakes like that and have the bump there. No, I thought INDYCAR did a good job. I think there’s no problem at all with it.”
“It didn’t really make any difference for us,” Palou, the series points leader, said. “I guess they tried hard. The good thing is we brake past that, so it’s just uncomfortable when you drive through there. But it was not any smoother. You were still hitting very, very hard.”
The green flag for the last street course race of the season flies at noon on Sunday, with an unpredictable race lying ahead.