Race one of Honda Indy Toronto will feature a historic front row. Eight championships and sixty-two wins equally split by the pole sitter and second place on the grid and each driver has won at Exhibition Place. Dario Franchitti and Sébastien Bourdais will roll off from row one. Each driver looks for win thirty-two and break a three-way between themselves and Paul Tracy for seventh on the all-time win list.
Row two features Will Power and Tony Kanaan. Power won at Toronto in 2007 and 2011 but he has not won a race since São Paulo last year. Tony Kanaan's best finish in Toronto is fourth in 2010 and 2012. James Jakes starts fifth. Jakes had an impressive doubleheader at Belle Isle and finished second in race two. The most recent winner Scott Dixon starts sixth. Ryan Hunter-Reay starts seventh. He won at Toronto from sixth on the grid last year. Helio Castroneves starts eighth. He leads Hunter-Reay by twenty-three points in the championship standings. 2005 Toronto winner Justin Wilson starts ninth with Ryan Briscoe starting tenth.
Marco Andretti and Takuma Sato start on row six ahead of Simon Pagenaud and hometown favorite James Hinchcliffe. EJ Viso and Charlie Kimball make up row eight. Kimball scored his first career podium at Toronto last year. Canadian Alex Tagliani starts seventeenth with Graham Rahal starting eighteenth. Josef Newgarden starts nineteenth. Last year Newgarden was in position for a podium before getting blocked by Simon Pagenaud and making slight contact with the wall. Belle Isle race one winner Mike Conway starts twentieth in his first race back since that win.
Rookie Tristan Vautier starts twenty-first. He finished eleventh in his only Indy Lights start at Toronto last year. Simona de Silvestro starts twenty-second. She had two top ten finishes at Toronto in three career starts. Ed Carpenter will start twenty-third ahead of the Dragon Chevrolet of Sebastián Saavedra.
Qualifying to set the grid for Sunday will take place at 10:35 a.m. ET today. Group one will feature Josef Newgarden, Tristan Vautier, Will Power, James Jakes, Sébastien Bourdais, Scott Dixon, Alex Tagliani, Helio Castroneves, EJ Viso, Takuma Sato, Simon Pagenaud and Ed Carpetner. Group two features Ryan Hunter-Reay, Ryan Briscoe, Marco Andretti, Tony Kanaan, Dario Franchitti, James Hinchcliffe, Justin Wilson, Charlie Kimball, Graham Rahal, Sebastián Saavedra, Simona de Silvestra and Mike Conway. The fastest driver will win pole for Sunday with the remaining drivers in the pole-sitters group making up the odd-numbered positions. The fastest in the other group will start second and the rest of the group will make up the even-numbered positions.
Today's race will feature the first standing start in American open wheel racing since Long Beach 2008. Coverage for race one of the Honda Indy Toronto will begin at 3:00 p.m. ET with green flag around 3:40 p.m. ET.
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