Toronto IndyCar: VeeKay leads incident-packed warm-up

The Dutch ace, who will start only 20^th after struggling throughout practice and qualifying, this morning lapped the course in 59.8987sec on a set of Firestone’s softer alternate tires.

That was enough to see him shade Alexander Rossi of Andretti Autosport-Honda, who was second fastest and the only other driver to duck under the 60sec barrier.

Alex Palou, around whom so much controversy and speculation has swirled this week, and who has endured a torrid couple of days in practice and qualifying for his first race in Toronto, was able to edge his Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda teammate Scott Dixon for third fastest spot, but he will start the race from 22^nd on the grid, whereas Dixon will start from the front row.

Championship leader Marcus Ericsson made it three Ganassi cars in the top six, separated from his teammates by Josef Newgarden.

Pole-sitter Colton Herta stalled as he tried to leave from his difficult pitbox and later caused a red flag when he skated into the run-off at Turn 3 and stalled.

Graham Rahal, who had the pace to reach the Firestone Fast Six but was one of those drivers who had his Q1 fast lap ruined by Kyle Kirkwood crashing and causing a red flag, passed the AJ Foyt Racing-Chevrolet driver down to Turn 3 in warm-up but on the dirtier inside line he locked up and nosed into the tire-wall. He then moved to the top of the times before another lock-up persuaded him to pit, in the belief that he had a braking issue, possibly a result of them getting overheated too easily. He still ended up seventh fastest, just ahead of another frustrated qualifier, Simon Pagenaud of Meyer Shank Racing-Honda, who is the defending race-winner here.

Will Power, another one whose qualifying hopes were ended by Kirkwood’s faux pas, outbraked himself at Turn 3, went down the run-off and then had his Team Penske-Chevrolet restarted by the AMR Safety Team. Although he wound up only 24^th fastest, Peacock revealed that he was the only driver who ran 15 consecutive laps to get a read on tire behavior. He will be trying to climb from 16^th on the grid.

Toronto native Devlin DeFrancesco, whose Andretti Autosport-Honda will start from his highest grid position of the season, 12^th, also visited the Turn 3 run-off but was able to resume without causing a red flag.

The Honda Indy Toronto begins at 3.30pm local (Eastern) time, and is being broadcast only via live streaming in the U.S. and Canada.

Cla	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap	Mph
1	Rinus van Kalmthout	Ed Carpenter Racing	24	59.8987		107.341
2	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	22	59.9439	0.0452	107.260
3	Alex Palou	Chip Ganassi Racing	20	1'00.1391	0.2404	106.912
4	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	23	1'00.2080	0.3093	106.790
5	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	20	1'00.2822	0.3835	106.658
6	Marcus Ericsson	Chip Ganassi Racing	25	1'00.3365	0.4378	106.562
7	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	23	1'00.4145	0.5158	106.425
8	Simon Pagenaud	Meyer Shank Racing	20	1'00.4477	0.5490	106.366
9	Jack Harvey	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	25	1'00.5410	0.6423	106.202
10	Callum Ilott	Juncos Hollinger Racing	23	1'00.5765	0.6778	106.140
11	Colton Herta	Andretti Autosport	18	1'00.6008	0.7021	106.098
12	Helio Castroneves	Meyer Shank Racing	25	1'00.7491	0.8504	105.839
13	Romain Grosjean	Andretti Autosport	24	1'00.7800	0.8813	105.785
14	Felix Rosenqvist	Arrow McLaren SP	25	1'00.7906	0.8919	105.766
15	Christian Lundgaard	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	21	1'00.8171	0.9184	105.720
16	Takuma Sato	Dale Coyne Racing	22	1'00.9340	1.0353	105.517
17	Devlin DeFrancesco	Andretti Autosport	18	1'01.0272	1.1285	105.356
18	David Malukas	Dale Coyne Racing	19	1'01.0360	1.1373	105.341
19	Scott McLaughlin	Team Penske	25	1'01.0976	1.1989	105.235
20	Conor Daly	Ed Carpenter Racing	20	1'01.1253	1.2266	105.187
21	Patricio O'Ward	Arrow McLaren SP	24	1'01.2458	1.3471	104.980
22	Jimmie Johnson	Chip Ganassi Racing	24	1'01.4054	1.5067	104.707
23	Will Power	Team Penske	24	1'01.4993	1.6006	104.548
24	Kyle Kirkwood	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	21	1'01.5070	1.6083	104.534
25	Dalton Kellett	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	19	1'01.9678	2.0691	103.757
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