Scott Dixon remembers how close last year’s Verizon IndyCar Series championship was, with the top of the standings at season’s end having two drivers with exactly the same number of points.
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COSTLY CAUTION: Pole-sitter Scott Dixon led 56 of the first 60 laps but was stung by a Lap 58 caution that occurred just before he planned to make his final planned stop under green.
Dixon turned a lap of 59.9073 seconds on Saturday (Sunday AEST) to land his 24th career pole and first since Mid-Ohio past year.
“(The start) is definitely going to be interesting”, Dixon said.
Dixon’s lap of 59.9073 seconds came on the final lap of the Firestone Fast Six, and it nudged Helio Castroneves back to the second spot as Castroneves’ best lap was 59.9425 seconds.
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“There’s no other racing series like this in the world and that’s what I like about it is every week – you need to change and adapt and be ready to really think outside the box on how you set the auto up, how you need to be as a driver and how you need to approach the race weekend making changes each week”, Hunter-Reay said. “It’s, I think, time for politicians to step up and do something pretty radical about the way we let people radicalize themselves because it’s getting absolutely insane out there”.
“It was obviously a great day to have a good day and for once we caught a lucky break in Toronto”, Hinchliffe said, alluding to the timing of the caution that left him third for the lap 63 restart. “In the morning yesterday (Saturday) we had a misfire with the engine and didn’t do any laps before qualifying”.
His fast lap was his last lap in the Fast Six finale round of the session and it gave him his first pole of the season.
Team Penske driver Helio Castroneves, of Brazil, drives during practice sessions at the Honda Toronto Indy in Toronto, Friday, July 15, 2016. The guys in front of us have pretty solid pace, we’re going to have to find a little bit in ourselves over the course of the evening and warmup. All the changes we made seem to be working. “That’s so important on a track like this”, Hunter-Reay said. Its drivers qualified 15th, 18th, 19th and 22nd.
Scott Dixon attempted to build up a lead ahead of his second stop, but things fell south for him when defending race victor Josef Newgarden crashed on Lap 58. “So each lap I’m like ‘Oh, this sucks, we’re not going to be very quick here.’ And then each lap kept on getting better”. His best finish was second place two years ago.
“As a team we have to work on it, because we shouldn’t be here”, said Hunter-Reay.
It’s also a shame – because just like that he’s back down from No. 2 in the title fight to No. 5 again. Due to construction of a hotel on the Exhibition Place grounds, the pits had been moved, which created tighter space on Turn 11. That’s what happens when you get to racetracks, you try to solve the puzzle.
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IndyCar on Sunday altered the course so that the wall in Turn 8 was changed to the configuration used in previous years.
