TORONTO – For anyone with any concern his first two-day Formula 1 test on a different continent would leave him out of sorts for IndyCar’s return to the streets of Toronto, Colton Herta proved those folks wrong. Just four days after he was getting his first taste of the pinnacle of open-wheel racing with a Portuguese track all to himself and his McLaren F1 test team, the Andretti Autosport driver grabbed his second pole of the 2022 IndyCar season – both on street courses – and 9th of his still young racing career by edging Scott Dixon (who will start 2nd) and Josef Newgarden (3rd) in Saturday’s qualifying for the Honda Indy Toronto.
Herta’s run to pole snaps IndyCar’s streak of nine different polesitters over the first nine races of the year – only one of whom who has won the same race they started on pole (Scott McLaughlin, St. Pete).
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“It couldn’t have been much better,” Herta said of his pole run in the Firestone Fast Six, where he jumped up to the top spot on his final lap and withstood a last-ditch effort from Dixon. “We had a great race car in the morning (practice), and we kind of did a little bit to adjust it. Ended up being very nearly this afternoon.”
After the checkered flag had fallen on the Fast Six, Herta sat 5th on his final lap but leapfrogged Newgarden’s top time (59.2698 vs. 59.5257). Then, Dixon jumped from 5th to 2nd moments later (59.3592). Behind them Alexander Rossi will start 4th, followed by IndyCar rookie David Malukas (5th), the best start of his career, and the series’ most recent race-winner Scott McLaughlin (6th).
Rookie Callum Ilott tied the best start of his IndyCar career in 7th, missing his first Fast Six berth by less than a half-a-tenth, followed by Felix Rosenqvist (8th), series points leader Marcus Ericsson (9th), rookie Christian Lundgaard (10th), Romain Grosjean (11th) and Toronto native Devlin DeFrancesco (12th).
The 22-year-old Canadian driver, whose best IndyCar start before this weekend was 17th, left feeling as if he’d left more on-track, having been docked his two fastest laps during the Firestone Fast 12 for impeding Andretti teammate Herta. During the session, DeFrancesco ran through Turn 1 into the runoff and attempted to return to the course in Turn 2 – a blind section that gave neither he nor Herta any idea the either was there visually.
During his first session, the driver of the No. 29 locked up the brakes and slid into the Turn 3 tire barrier, but he managed to keep the car running, reverse out of it and keep going while only causing a local yellow and not impeding any others’ laps, meaning he was able to move on.
“It was definitely nice to get that monkey off our back,” DeFrancesco said. “That’s something that has been prying on me for a little while.”
Several drivers who just missed advancing into the Fast 12 from Herta and DeFrancesco’s Group 2 of the opening round of qualifying left Saturday feeling slighted. It began with Conor Daly, who will start last (25th) in Sunday’s race after being docked his two fastest laps and was disallowed from advancing for qualifying interference on Herta. The instance came near the start of the session, with Herta the first in line able to get out of the pits and Daly in the back. As he explained on Twitter, he felt as if there was more than enough room on the 1.786-mile street track for the 13 cars in the session to give each other space, but as the cars attempted to slow up to gain open track with which to run their qualifying runs, Daly was slowed back into an oncoming Herta on a flying lap as Daly was just trying to get up to speed.
“The fact that someone in line decides to back the last two cars all the way into the person who went out first is insane,” he wrote on Twitter. “Nothing I can do when everyone is stopped in front of me in (Turn 8). That was an utter disaster.”
Halfway through the session, just as DeFrancesco was attempting to work his way out of the Turn 3 tires, defending champ Alex Palou sputtered to a stop coming through Turns 1 and 2. Though he said over the radio at the time, “The engine is dead,” he believed post-qualifying the issue was not a truly blown engine. His strategist Barry Wanser told IndyStar later Chip Ganassi Racing believed the issue to be a failed sensor.
The red flag for Palou’s stopped No. 10 Honda left those in Group 2 the opportunity for just one timed lap to finish the end of that session and try to post a time to advance. During that last-ditch effort for most of that group, rookie Kyle Kirkwood was tracking on a top-6 lap but slapped the wall and then spun in Turn 8 just as he crossed the timing line. The incident forced race control to throw a red flag, ending the session and disallowing those in the middle of laps – including veterans Graham Rahal and Will Power. At best, others who had just finished their laps only got one lap on the faster red tires – typically not the fastest lap as they get up to temperature, due to the combination of the earlier yellow for Palou.
“Super disappointed I didn’t get to turn a full lap at speed,” said Simon Pagenaud, who was part of the Group 2 mess and who, after finishing the two earlier practices 2nd and 11th-fastest in the field, will start 18th Sunday. “Those are the rules you wish would change for a lot of years, and they haven’t. It doesn’t show our performance or the performances of a lot of other drivers and teams. Hopefully, we can grow from here and maybe improve what’s going on.
“I’m disappointed for the whole team that’s done a great job. It feels like a bit of a wasted weekend at the moment.”
Notable starting spots outside the top-12 for Sunday’s race include: Graham Rahal (14th), Pato O’Ward (15th), Will Power (16th), Helio Castroneves (17th), Rinus VeeKay (20th), Jimmie Johnson (21st) and Alex Palou (22nd).
Palou is upbeat
Coming off a runner-up performance at Mid-Ohio that pushed him up to 4th in the points race and this week’s chaos, where both CGR and McLaren Racing believe to have signed the defending champ to 2023 contracts, Palou was in good spirits despite staring down the worst start of his title defense season.
In his arsenal, he has his Detroit performance in the most recent street race, where he started 18th and leapt up to 6th by the race’s end, as well as Power’s run at Mid-Ohio, where the Team Penske driver spun on Lap 1, dropped to last and still managed to work his way up to 3rd at one of the hardest tracks to pass at on the calendar.
“We’ve already gone through really bad (weekends), so it’s okay not to have an amazing one so far,” Palou told IndyStar. “But no one has a point yet except for Colton. It’s not great to start there, but also not the worst it could be. It could be that we’re in that position by pace and not a failure, so it’s not a bad weekend yet. We can still try and recover from it tomorrow.”
The mechanical failure piled onto his rough Saturday morning practice where Palou slapped the Turn 2 inside wall and was sent careening into the outside concrete barrier, ending his session early to miss valuable on-track time during his first visit to Toronto.
“It’s racing, right? Something goes bad, and it all gets into the same weekend,” he said. “But it’s alright. The good thing is we have pace, and with that pace in IndyCar, you can manage to do stuff. I don’t think we can do a complete ‘Will Power’ (at Mid-Ohio), but near-last to top-10? Yeah, and then you can have some more luck, maybe.
“But just on pace, we can have a top 10 finish.”
