NTT IndyCar Series: Honda Indy Toronto Preview

The field heads down the straightaway in the Honda Indy Toronto. © [Adam Piggot / Spacesuit Media]

by Paul Gohde

Indy car racing has a long history in Canada with events having been held in Toronto/ Exhibition Place, Vancouver (15), Edmonton (8), Toronto/Mosport (4), Montreal/ Ile Notre Dame (5), Montreal/Mount Tremblant (3) and Montreal/Sanair (3) at various times, beginning in 1967.  Racing on the Streets of Toronto’s Exhibition Place circuit, however, is currently the lone Canadian Indy car survivor, with the NTT Indy Car Series Honda Indy Toronto running for the 35^th time on Sunday.

Previous Races at Toronto: Scott Dixon won his third race of the season last year on his way to his fifth series’ championship. His Ganassi Honda beat Simon Pagenaud by 5.270 seconds while leading a race-high 49/85 laps. Canadian rookie Robert Wickens completed the podium with his SPM teammate, and fellow Canadian, James Hinchcliffe fourth. Wickens was seriously injured at Pocono a month later and continues  to undergo rehabilitation with the hope of returning to racing at some point in the future. Pole-winner Josef Newgarden led 25 laps but brushed the Turn 11 barrier on lap 33 and dropped to a ninth-place finish.

NTT 2019 Season So Far: There have been six different winners in the previous 10 series’ races. Newgarden has won three while Pagenaud and Alexander Rossi each have two. Colton Herta, Takuma Sato and Scott Dixon each have one…2019 NTT Series Points after 10 races. Top Five: 1) Newgarden-Chevrolet /402pts. 2 )Rossi-Honda /-7.  3) Pagenaud-Chevrolet /-61.  4) Dixon-Honda /-94.  5) Power-Chevrolet /-108.

The Field: Only 22 car/driver combinations are entered for Sunday’s race. Sage Karam will drive for Carlin, his first 2019 start since debuting at the Indianapolis 500 in May where he finished 19th for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports. Seventeen entered drivers have raced here before. New to Toronto Indy cars are rookies Marcus Ericsson, Santino Ferrucci, Colton Herta and Felix Rosenqvist as well as veteran Sage Karam…There were 23 entries at Toronto in 2018.

Notes: TV- NBCSN: Qualifying, 2 p.m. (ET) Saturday (live). Race, 3 p.m.(ET) Sunday (live). Green Flag, 3:42 p.m.…The Toronto Honda Indy is the second-longest running street race on the NTT IndyCar Series’ schedule (34 races prior to Sunday) behind Long Beach with (36)…In 2016 the Toronto street course was modified due to the construction of a new hotel. The course went from 1.750 miles to the current 1.786 miles…If talk is to be believed, a race at the Montreal F1 circuit on Ile Notre Dame may be added to the IndyCar schedule as soon as next season…Tragedy struck the Toronto event in 1996 when CART driver Jeff Krosnoff was killed just four laps from the finish. Also killed was course marshal Gary Avril.

Our Take: Street course races often fall into the area of “anything can happen and likely will”. Tight quarters can bring about unwanted contact, whether accidental or intentional. The first turn at Toronto is an extremely tight right-hander and with a full-field diving in on the first lap, even the front row had better be wary. Given all that, Dixon may grab his fourth Toronto win for Chip Ganassi Honda, while Will Power could  get his fourth for Team Penske Chevrolet. Our Dark Horse pick is Graham Rahal.

Final Words: Takuma Sato (No. 30 Mi-Jack/Panasonic RLL Honda): “We had a really good pace here (last year) and had a good start…but, unfortunately, I had an incident. It was really a shame because a podium finish was possible…We are trying a new concept this year and it works well in areas…Street courses are always challenging as there is no margin for errors. Toronto is famous as one of the bumpiest and it is quite tricky as the surface changes multiple times, even in a single corner. Also, the track has a long straight followed by a heavy braking area down to the hairpin, and that provides a lot of opportunity for overtaking.”

Paul Gohde

Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.

The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.

Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.

He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.

Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”

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