Morning Warm-Up: Toronto 2019

Simon Pagenaud looks to jump back in the title fight from pole position at Toronto

Simon Pagenaud won his second pole position of the 2019 NTT IndyCar Series season with a lap of 58.4293 around Exhibition Place in Toronto. It is Pagenaud's first pole position on a road or street course since Toronto 2017. This is only the second time in his IndyCar career he has had multiple pole positions in a season. The other time was his championship season in 2016 when he won eight pole positions. This is his sixth career pole position on a street course but in his previous five street course pole positions his best finish is second, on two occasions, and he has finished outside the top ten on two occasions. Pagenaud has six top five finishes in his last 27 races. In his prior 27 starts, Pagenaud had 18 top five finishes including four victories and nine podium finishes. His runner-up finish last year at Toronto is his only top five finish on a street course in the last two seasons.

For the second consecutive season, Scott Dixon will roll off from second on the grid for the Honda Indy Toronto. Dixon missed out on his first pole position on a street course since Toronto 2016 by 0.1655 seconds. Dixon has won from second on the grid six times in his IndyCar career. Dixon had three podium finishes in the first four street course races this season. It is Dixon's most street course podium finishes since he had four in 2013, three of which were victories. Dixon has never had more than four street course podium finishes in a season.

Felix Rosenqvist will start third and it is his fifth career top five start. Rosenqvist had started outside the top fifteen in the prior two races. He swept the 2016 Indy Lights races at Toronto and those were Rosenqvist's final Indy Lights starts before he joined Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters with the Mercedes-Benz program and he joined Formula E later that year. Alexander Rossi will have a Toronto career best start of fourth. Rossi is currently on the longest streak of consecutive top five finishes in his IndyCar career with five consecutive finishes in the top five, four of those have been in the top two. Rossi has led a lap in three of the four street course races this season with the second Belle Isle race being the one where he did not take point at any time during the duration of the event. The only time the Toronto winner has started fourth was Will Power in 2016.

Josef Newgarden will start one position worse than his closest championship rival in fifth. Newgarden has never finished on the podium in the 11th race of the season. Last year, was his best result in the 11th race of a season when he finished fourth at Iowa. Newgarden has led a lap in every street course race this season. Since joining Team Penske, Newgarden has 12 top ten finishes in 14 street course races with his two non-top ten results coming the second Belle Isle race in 2018 and 2019 respectively. In his 14 street course starts with Penske, Newgarden's average finish is 6.285. In his 14 street course starts prior to joining Team Penske his average finish was 13.857. Ed Jones rounded out the top six. It was Jones' second Fast Six appearance of the season. He started fifth in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. He has three top ten finishes in his last 12 starts. Since finishing 1-2 as CFH Racing with Josef Newgarden and Luca Filippi in 2015, the average finish for Ed Carpenter Racing entries at Toronto is 17th with no top ten finishes.

Marco Andretti gets his best starting position of the season, his best career starting position at Toronto and his best starting position on a street course since entrant points decided the starting grid for the second Belle Isle race in 2015 with his seventh place qualifying result. Andretti has three consecutive top ten finishes at Toronto but he has never finished better than fourth. Andretti has completed 970 of 971 laps in his 12 starts but he has never led a lap at Exhibition Place. No driver has completed more laps in this event without leading a lap. The driver with the second most laps completed at Toronto without leading a lap is Scott Goodyear, who completed 692 laps. His grandfather Mario only led six laps at Toronto. Sébastien Bourdais joins Andretti on row four. Bourdais has only two top ten finishes in his last seven starts. Last year, Bourdais had only one top ten finish in a seven race period from the Indianapolis 500 to Toronto. His 19th place finish last year was his worst result at Exhibition Place.

Spencer Pigot will start a career best of ninth at Toronto. This is the fourth consecutive race Pigot has started in the top ten. Entering this weekend, Pigot's average finish at Toronto is 19th with his best finish at Exhibition Place being 18th. The only other track where Pigot has not finished in the top fifteen is Pocono and he has only made one start at that track. Takuma Sato rounded out the top ten. Sato has yet to lead a lap at Toronto and it is one of five tracks on the current IndyCar schedule where Sato has not led with the others being Road America, Mid-Ohio, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course and Austin, which joined the schedule this year. He led his first laps of his IndyCar career at Barber and Texas earlier this season. Sato and the man starting directly ahead of him on the grid, Bourdais, had a dust up during and after third practice yesterday, with the two drivers exchanging a few blows after the session.

Seventh and eighth in the championship will start 11th and 12th with Ryan Hunter-Reay ahead of Graham Rahal. This is the fourth time in the last five Toronto races Hunter-Reay has started outside the top ten. Hunter-Reay has only one podium finish through the first ten races and it is the third time in the last five seasons Hunter-Reay has had one podium or fewer through the first ten races. He did not have a podium finishes in the first ten races of 2015 and he had only one podium finish in the first ten races of 2017. Rahal has four top five finishes from the first ten races of 2019. Last year, Rahal had three top five finishes and all three of those results came in the first eight races. Rahal is looking for his third consecutive top five finish and it would be the first time he has achieved that since he swept the Belle Isle doubleheader in 2017 and finished fourth in the next race at Texas.

Max Chilton matched his best starting position of the season and he will roll off from 13th on the grid. Toronto is the site of the only street course top ten finish in Chilton's career. Chilton was the seventh place finisher from ninth on the grid at Toronto in 2017. This is the first time Chilton has been the top Carlin qualifier this season. James Hinchcliffe will start his home race from 14th position. This is the fourth time in 10 Toronto appearances he will start from the seventh row of the grid. The bad news for Hinchcliffe is the worst starting position for a Toronto winner is 13th. Michael Andretti won from that position in 2001. Hinchcliffe has not had a podium finish in his last 16 starts. Hinchcliffe's longest streak without a podium finish is 18 races, which were the first 18 races of his career. Hinchcliffe has seven podium finishes on street courses, five of those are third place finishes and the other two were the first two victories of his career at St. Petersburg and São Paulo, which both came in 2013.

Will Power will start for 15th, the second worst starting position of his career at Toronto. This is the fourth time in the last five races Power will start outside the top ten. This is Power's worst starting position on a street course since he started 18th at Long Beach in 2015. He had won pole position in the 11th race of the season the last two seasons. Power has not won a pole position in the last nineraces, the longest stretch of his IndyCar career since 2013 when he went ten races between pole positions from Texas to the season finale at Fontana. Colton Herta has his worst starting position of the season, as he will start 16th. Herta had made it to the second round of qualifying in every race this season with his worst starting position being 11th at St. Petersburg. Herta got his first top ten finish since his Austin victory last time out with an eighth place finish at Road America from pole position.

Santino Ferrucci will make his Toronto debut form 17th on the grid. Ferrucci enters Toronto with the most laps completed in all of IndyCar. Ferrucci has completed 1,043 of 1,045 laps. In the DW12-era, the driver that has completed the most laps has finished in the top ten of the championship every year with the average championship finishing position for those drivers being fourth. The driver that has completed the most laps has finished outside the top ten in the championship twice since 1947, Buzz Calkins, who finished 13th in the 1999 IRL championship and Mário Haberfeld, who finished 13th in the 2003 CART championship. Zach Veach starts 18th, only his fifth worst starting position of the season. Veach has never made it out of the first round of qualifying at a street course. His three best street course starting positions have all come at Belle Isle where the three-round knockout format is not used.

Matheus Leist and Marcus Ericsson will start on row ten. This is the fifth consecutive race Leist has started on row ten or worse and this is the eighth time he has started on row ten or worse this season. Leist made it out of the first round of qualifying last year at Toronto and he started 12th. The only time Leist has made it out of round one this year was at Austin, where he started 12th. Ericsson's first year on street courses on IndyCar have not been great on paper. His best starting position is 12th and his average finishing position after this qualifying effort is 14th but in the most recent street course race, the Sunday Belle Isle race, Ericsson was the runner-up finisher. Ericsson's only top ten starting position so far this season was ninth at the Grand Prix of Indianapolis.

Sage Karam will make his Toronto debut from 21st on the grid. Karam's average finish on road and street courses entering Toronto was 16.667 with his best starting position being 12th in the first Belle Isle race in 2015. His average finish on road and street courses is 17.5 with his best result being 12th in the second Belle Isle race in 2015. Tony Kanaan rounds out the field in 22nd position. This is the eighth time Kanaan has started outside the top twenty this season and the third consecutive race he could not crack the top ten rows. This is Kanaan's worst starting position at Toronto in 17 appearances. Kanaan has finished in the top six in eight of the last 11 Toronto races, including a sixth place finish last year. He has started outside the top ten in the last three Toronto races.

NBCSN's coverage of the Honda Indy Toronto begins at 3:00 p.m. ET with green flag scheduled for 3:42 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 85 laps.