Newgarden grabs pole position
Canadians Hinchcliffe, Wickens barely crack top 10 on Indy grid
Despite scattered showers Saturday that made driving the circuit at Exhibition Place challenging, defending race winner Josef Newgarden won the pole for Sunday’s 32nd Honda Indy Toronto with a lap around the 11-turn, 1.786-mile temporary street course of 59.4956 seconds, which translates into a speed of 108.068 miles an hour.
Scott Dixon, who, like Newgarden, has won this race twice, will start second after turning a lap of 59.6920 seconds. The other four drivers to make it to the final Fast 6 of a knockout qualifying procedure that sees a certain number eliminated after each session were Simon Pagenaud, Will Power, Alexander Rossi and Ryan-HunterReay, who will start the race in that order.
Two of the three Canadians to qualify for Sunday afternoon’s headline event, which will go to the post at 3:35 p.m., made it to the Quick 12 but could go no further. James Hinchcliffe of Oakville and Robert Wickens of Guelph will start ninth and 10th, respectively.
The third Canadian, Zachary Claman DeMelo of Montreal, was eliminated early and will start 23rd out of the 23 drivers entered.
All of the drivers in the Fast 6 said two things were responsible for what really are blistering speeds around the CNE grounds – the new car introduced to the series this year that is more aerodynamic than previous Indy cars and the paving of Princes’ Blvd., which leads into Turn 1 at the Princes’ Gates.
That “main straight” has become bumpier and bumpier over the years and resulted in single-file racing through Turn 1. But now, with the fresh pavement, the road is as smooth as a baby’s bottom and several drivers suggested Turn 1 would become a passing zone again.
Said Rossi: “I really didn’t like this track until this weekend. They repaved into Turn 1, so it’s completely changed my perspective of this place, and it’s one of my favourite street circuits now. Hats off to everyone at the sanctioning body and the city of Toronto for doing that.”
Wickens and Hinchcliffe were clearly disappointed. Both think of Toronto as being their home race and both have many members of their family and friends on hand to watch them perform. Both were hoping to make it into the Fast 6, which would have qualified them to run for pole.
Hinchcliffe was on a flyer near the end of the Quick 12 session when he lost control and spun out. He didn’t do any damage, managing to keep his car from hitting the wall, and recovered to get back up to speed but was unable to put a fast lap together before the session ended.
“I went up a little too high on the curb (of the corner preceding the scene of his spin) and that unsettled the car,” he said. “It was my fault, 100 per cent, and I’m sorry but tomorrow is another day and I expect we’ll have a good race,” said the driver who’s finished on the podium twice in the last two years.
Wickens, a veteran of European racing who’s a rookie in the series and racing in Toronto for the first time, clearly was having difficulty driving his car. An in-car camera showed his hands and arms working wildly as he attempted to maintain control. It looked like he was trying to ride a bucking bronco.
“It felt like that to me, too,” Wickens told the Star, after he consulted with his crew. “We’ve been struggling all weekend to get the car settled and we just couldn’t get it done. But we’ll have a debrief and figure out what we can do for the race tomorrow. There’s some things we can do with the car and we have to talk about our race strategy. I’m still feeling good about the race.”
It was Newgarden’s fifth career pole and his fourth of 2018. Newgarden said Thursday that in coming to Toronto this year, he wanted to beat Hinchcliffe and he said after qualifying that it remains his goal.
“They (Schmidt Peterson Motorsports) looked like they did a good job,” he said. “It (qualifying) didn’t flow for them how it needed to, but Hinch and Wickens are relatively up there, so they’re not in a bad spot. They could very much capitalize on a good race and win, no doubt, so it’s going to be tough to beat them.
“But yeah, he beat me in Iowa (last weekend) and he did a great job but it’s always nice to get him back.”