Simon Pagenaud roars to Toronto Pole as rivals fall by the wayside

Simon Pagenaud reigned supreme on the Streets of Toronto as he took the pole for tomorrow’s Honda Indy Toronto while many of his competitors suffered bad luck.

This year’s Indy 500 champion has been the class the field the entire weekend as he paced two out of the three pre-qualifying practice sessions.

The Frenchman continued that performance in qualifying as he laid down a lap of 58.4293 seconds to dispatch Scott Dixon in the waning seconds of the session. Dixon set the benchmark early with a lap of 58.5948s only to have his bid for pole come apart when he spun off Turn 11 coming to make his final push.

The incident did not bring out a red flag, and Dixon will retain his runner up starting spot ahead of rookie Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Felix Rosenqvist who came up .0845s shy of snagging a front row spot.

The series’ top championship contenders Alexander Rossi and Josef Newgarden both saw their runs for the pole hindered by contact with the retaining walls on the tight 1.786-mile street circuit.

Rossi nicked the wall in Turn 6 on his final run and ended up fourth in the lineup ahead of Newgarden who contacted the wall in Turn 11 and suffered a broken right-rear toelink.

Rounding out the Fast Six was a positive showing for the Ed Carpenter Racing with Scuderia Corsa entry driven by  Ed Jones, who made his first Fast Six since the IndyCar Grand Prix of Indianapolis back in May.

Marco Andretti barely missed out on the Fast Six but nonetheless captured his best starting spot of the year in seventh at a track where his father Michael Andretti has won seven times.

Two-time Toronto winner Sebastien Bourdais will start eighth ahead of Spencer Pigot in ninth and Takuma Sato rounded out the top ten.

A couple of surprises came further down the grid first with local favorite James Hinchcliffe failing to advance into Q2 by a slim .04s which left him 14th.

The other shocker came from Team Penske’s Will Power who struggled to find pace throughout the session and failed to advance to Q2 for the first time since Long Beach in 2015 and will start 15th tomorrow.