Having looked strong all weekend, Pagenaud turned a searing 58.9124sec lap of the 1.786-mile course to beat the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing-Honda of Rahal by 0.3121sec and score his 10^th pole position of his career.

Perhaps more amazing was that Pagenaud outpaced Penske teammates Helio Castroneves and Will Power by 0.52 and 0.63 seconds respectively – a huge margin around a one-minute course.

Scott Dixon was almost 0.9sec adrift, despite a brilliant Q2 effort on his final lap, while local hero James Hinchclifffe claimed sixth in the Schmidt Peterson Motorsports-Honda.

Penske’s fourth man, Josef Newgarden, missed out in a final desperate sprint to progress from Q2, after JR Hildebrand’s crunching encounter with a wall brought out a red flag and left everyone with a final chance to lay down one flying lap.

Newgarden will roll off seventh alongside the fastest Andretti Autosport-Honda of Alexander Rossi, who had been Top Six until the stoppage. Max Chilton was second fastest Ganassi driver and will start ninth ahead of Takuma Sato and Marco Andretti and Hildebrand who lost his best time.

A heavy shunt from Esteban Gutierrez at the end of the second group in Q1, left stars such as Tony Kanaan (Ganassi) and Ryan Hunter-Reay (Andretti) outside the Top 12 – 14th and 16th respectively.

Toronto lineup

Cla	#	Driver	Time	Gap	Mph
1	1	Simon Pagenaud	58.9124		109.138
2	15	Graham Rahal	59.2245	0.3121	108.563
3	3	Helio Castroneves	59.4345	0.5221	108.180
4	12	Will Power	59.5430	0.6306	107.982
5	9	Scott Dixon	59.7970	0.8846	107.524
6	5	James Hinchcliffe	1'00.1415	1.2291	106.908
7	2	Josef Newgarden	59.8992	0.9868	107.340
8	98	Alexander Rossi	1'00.0114	1.0990	107.140
9	8	Max Chilton	1'00.1202	1.2078	106.946
10	26	Takuma Sato	1'00.1970	1.2846	106.809
11	27	Marco Andretti	1'00.3384	1.4260	106.559
12	21	J.R. Hildebrand	1'02.3040	3.3916	103.197
13	20	Spencer Pigot	59.7585	0.8461	107.593
14	10	Tony Kanaan	1'00.0607	1.1483	107.052
15	19	Ed Jones	59.8686	0.9562	107.395
16	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	1'00.0926	1.1802	106.995
17	83	Charlie Kimball	59.9820	1.0696	107.192
18	4	Conor Daly	1'00.2713	1.3589	106.678
19	14	Carlos Munoz	1'00.1650	1.2526	106.866
20	7	Sebastian Saavedra	1'00.6272	1.7148	106.051
21	18	Esteban Gutierrez	1'00.7441	1.8317	105.847