Honda Indy Toronto Preview

Canadian James Hinchcliffe is looking for his first 2014 victory.  Will it happen in Toronto?  [John Wiedemann Photo]

Ryan Hunter-Reay and Scott Dixon will testify that the Honda Indy Toronto race this weekend can play an important role in winning the Verizon IndyCar Series championship.

Both drivers had three-race winning streaks-Hunter-Reay in 2012 and Dixon last year- that played an important part in capturing their series’ crown. And both winning streaks included a victory on the streets of Toronto.

Dario Franchitti also won at Toronto in both 2009 and again in 2011 on the way to the series’ championship.

The Ontario race has a rich history dating back to 1986 when Bobby Rahal won the inaugural CART-sanctioned event over Danny Sullivan and Mario Andretti.

CART (1986-2003), Champ Car (2004-’07) and IRL/IndyCar (2009-present) have held 28 races on the streets of Toronto’s Exhibition Place, near the shores of Lake Ontario, leading up to the 2014 doubleheader event.

Target Chip Ganassi Racing arrives in Canada having won there six times including a sweep of both races by Dixon in 2013. The reigning series’ champ has also recorded six top-five finishes here but remains in eighth-place (-140) in the current season’s standings. TCGR teammate Tony Kanaan was strong at Iowa last week, having lead 247 0f the 300-lap race, until he was passed by eventual winner Hunter-Reay with two laps remaining. Charlie Kimball scored his first career podium here in 2012.

Penske Racing’s Helio Castroneves has never won an Indy car championship, but jumped into first-place at Iowa, nine points ahead of teammate Will Power who has won here twice, and 32 up on RHR. Simon Pagenaud trails (-50) and Penske’s Juan Pablo Montoya (-66) rounds-out the first five. JPM won at Pocono two weeks ago, giving the team an added head of steam for Toronto.

Hunter-Reay has three wins this season for Andretti Autosport (Indianapolis 500, Barber and Iowa) and Carlos Munoz is sixth in points, but teammates Marco Andretti and James Hinchcliffe have yet to score a win and remain well back in the points’ race.

AA team-owner Michael Andretti has won here seven times as a driver, but unless he climbs back into the cockpit this weekend, the team will likely depend on Hunter-Reay for a victory.

Hinchcliffe is the only active Canadian driver in the series, but after scoring three wins a year ago, and finishing eighth in points, he’s fallen 177 points behind the leaders with no wins so far in 2014.

Dale Coyne Racing has had one win this season with Carlos Huertas at Houston Race 1, but team leader Justin Wilson, who has had one career win (2005/Champ Car) and two poles at Toronto, has been shut out up to now.

Simon Pagenaud has two road/street course wins (Indy Grand Prix, Houston Race 2) for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports and is fourth in points. Others with r/s wins include Power (2), Mike Conway, Hunter-Reay, Castroneves and Huertas.

Look for Dixon or Pagenaud to win here, but Hinchcliffe would love to follow in fellow-Canadian Paul Tracy’s footsteps. Tracy had two wins and a pole in Toronto during his long open-wheel career.

NOTES:

• The Honda Indy Toronto will be races 13-14 on the schedule with just four races remaining before the finale at Fontana on August 30.
• The Toronto circuit is a 1.75 mi. /11-turn course and the two races will each be 85 laps /149.75 mi. Both races will have standing starts.
• Twenty-three cars are entered with Luca Filippi rejoining the field for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and Mike Conway takes over for owner Ed Carpenter.
• Mikel Aleshin, Jack Hawksworth, Huertas and Filippi have never raced Indy cars in Toronto.
• Canadian Jacques Villeneuve won the pole and finished third here back in 1995 on his march to the CART championship.
• The Newman-Haas team had seven wins at Toronto, most of any squad.
• Hinchcliffe, a Toronto native, has attended every race held here since he was 18-months- old.
• Tony Kanaan in the Toronto Globe and Mail: “A win is around the corner for sure. We’re going to Toronto, a race that Dixon dominated last year; both races. We have high hopes there; trying to finish the season on a high note.”
• TV: Race 1-2, NBC Sports Network, 3:00pm (ET) both Saturday and Sunday. Qualifying, Saturday 2:00pm (ET). Radio: IMS Radio Network, XM 209/Sirius 213.

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.”

racingnation.com

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