Montoya on the fast track at Toronto Indy
TORONTO — No one was more surprised with Juan Pablo Montoya’s practice session at the Honda Indy Toronto on Friday than Montoya himself.
Montoya, the IndyCar points leader, posted a one-lap time of one minute 0.643 seconds in the morning session over the 1.755-mile, 11-turn Exhibition Place street circuit. That stood as the day’s fastest effort as rain washed out the afternoon practice run.
Montoya wasn’t expecting such a good opening result.
“No, because we didn’t do that many laps and we had a problem with the brakes so we had a little bit less track time,” he said. “We went out there and the speed was there, which is encouraging.
“With the rain, it makes it harder because any rubber we put down (will be washed away). So (on Saturday) we have to start from zero again ... but being that fast on a street course despite not running that much, that’s pretty good.”
The final practice is scheduled for Saturday morning before qualifying begins later in the afternoon. Gil de Ferran holds the track qualifying record of 57.143 seconds set in 1999.
The Honda Indy Toronto race goes Sunday afternoon.
Montoya leads the driver’s standings with 348 points, having also registered two victories so far this season. He’s 35 points ahead of Penske teammate Will Power, the defending series champion, and holds a 43-point advantage over Scott Dixon, three times Indycar’s top driver.
Power, who was sixth in practice with a time of 1:00.8656, said battling a teammate for the driver’s title does create an interesting scenario. “Yeah, I mean, obviously battling teammates is a little bit harder because you’re in the same engineering office,” the Australian said. “Battling another team is a big team effort and the push is to beat that team but battling a teammate ... it’s a different story.”
Penske’s Simon Pagenaud had the second-best practice time (1:00.7922) while Josef Newgarden was third (1:00.8363). Luca Filippi (1:00.8500) and Sebastien Bourdais (1:00.8620) rounded out the top-five.