With a tight championship battle winding down, the last thing IndyCar’s title contenders needed was to have a rough afternoon of qualifying for Sunday’s 85-lap Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto race.
The narrow and bumpy 11-turn, 1.8-mile street course does provide a few well-used passing opportunities throughout each lap, and most of the top six in the Drivers’ standings will need to get creative if they are going to dig themselves out of the starting position holes they’re in.
Entering the event, Alex Palou leads the championship followed by Will Power, Pato O’Ward, Scott Dixon, Scott McLaughlin, and Colton Herta, and of the six, Palou has the longest distance to travel after being relegated to start 18th after being penalized for blocking O’Ward.
Nearby, an unhappy O’Ward starts 14th, Dixon rolls off 15th, and in a slightly more favorable situation, Power will head to the green flag in ninth. Only Herta, with his 14th career pole, and McLaughlin, in fifth, are starting where they are normally found.
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Palou’s blocking call, which pulled him out of competing in the Firestone Fast 12 session and a chance at going for pole, left the smiley defending series champion with a stone-face demeanor after the penalty was assessed.
“We need to look at that,” the Chip Ganassi Racing driver said. “I do not agree at the moment. I need to check it. I had three cars in front of me — couldn’t really go anywhere. I was out already for one lap, unlike the cars that were in front of me, so yeah, do not agree, but this is what it is.”
The Spaniard knows he has a lot of ground to recover if he wants to earn meaningful points in the race, but hasn’t lost confidence.
“It doesn’t help, for sure, but we have a fast car,” Palou said. “As long as we have a fast car, [we’ll] be able to move.”
O’Ward needed some time to decompress after climbing from his car.
“It’s been a tough weekend,” he said. “Obviously, qualifying was really frustrating with cars getting in the way right in the peak of the window of the tires to be able to transfer. We were less than a tenth and a half to transfer, so I think we would have been okay without those implications.
“It is frustrating, knowing that we could have started further up, but we will be rolling off P14. Historically, this hasn’t been one of our best tracks. It will be a tough one, but we will give it our best and see what the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet can do.”