Pagenaud starts first in Toronto
Indianapolis 500 winner Simon Pagenaud will start from the pole for the Indycar race through the streets of Toronto.
Pagenaud has been on a tear around Exhibition Place all weekend as his Team Penske Chevrolet has been consistently fast and he paced Saturday morning’s final practice on the 11-turn, 1.786-mile street course. Then he took pole in qualifying, edging out reigning series champion Scott Dixon for the top starting spot in Sunday’s race.
“This is the best you can feel in racing, when you achieve what you expect,” said Pagenaud, who won the Indy 500 in May from the pole.
Dixon said after qualifying he’s been bothered almost a month with “tennis elbow” — an inflammation of the tendons in the elbow — from working in the simulator and the discomfort has been problematic on Toronto’s rough street circuit.
“It’s been a bit of a nightmare,” Dixon said. “I got it the week of Texas and then
I had it all the way through at Le Mans, and then at Road America it was really bad in the race. So we’ve been trying to do some therapy with it but tennis elbow. There’s no easy fix. It might be an offseason project, we’ll see.”
Dixon teammate Felix Rosenqvist qualified third for Chip Ganassi Racing, followed by Indy 500 runner-up Alexander Rossi for Andretti Autosport as Honda drivers took spots two through four.
Indycar points leader Josef Newgarden qualified fifth, followed by Ed Jones.
Marco Andretti, Sebastian Bourdais, Spencer Pigot and Takuma Sato qualified seventh through 10th.
The day got off to a hot start when Sato confronted Bourdais following the morning practice session. Bourdais was still in his cockpit when Sato approached and appeared to grab the Frenchman, Bourdais climbed out of his car throwing haymakers and a team representative tried to separate the two drivers. But the scuffle continued another few seconds and Bourdais said later Sato seemed to overreact to an on-track pass.
Bottas edges Hamilton for pole
Valtteri Bottas was six milliseconds — 0.006 — faster than Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton to take the pole for the British Grand Prix in Silverstone, England.
It will be the first time since 2014 that Hamilton hasn’t started from the front at his home Formula One race as he chases a record sixth victory on Sunday.
Bottas opened the season by winning two of the first four races but hasn’t been on pole since the Spanish GP in May.
Hamilton has a 31-point lead over Bottas in the championship standings.