For 13 competitors, today was their first experience driving an IndyCar in the streets of toronto. The other 12 had raced this track before, and they knew why they were coming. One of them is Alexandre Rossi, who in the absence of Canadian victories knows what it’s like to get on the podium twice. Still immersed in his particular struggle to return to the top level, the American driver was the fastest in a competitive and interrupted first practice session at Indy Toronto.

the pilot of Andretti Autosportmired in controversy two weeks ago at Mid-Ohio over his incidents with two teammates, took advantage of his soft tires in the final minutes to post a time of 1:00.609, trailing 90 thousandths by Simon Pagenaudthe last winner of the event in 2019. The French driver acted as the unbeatable “cicerone” for Meyer Shank Racing, a team competing for the first time in Toronto as its full-time expansion coincides with the pandemic.

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Braving the bad feelings of a terrible season for his team, Graham Rahl He set the third fastest time. After him, the head of the general finished Marcus Ericsonwhich continues to show top performances globally, and one of its main pursuers, Joseph Newgarden, who is 34 points behind the Swede. He had to drop to ninth place to find his partner WillEricsson’s closest driver in the table by just 20 points.

After the extraordinary events of the week, Alex Palou turned heads, and the Spanish rider responded with a more than decent performance in his first real experience of the city of Toronto. It took him very little time to get into competitive lap times, leading the session with 10 minutes to go, and while his tenth position might seem a bit low, his 1:01.052 was the best time among the 13 “rookies” in the eventslightly ahead of rookie Christian Lundgaard.

It wasn’t enough to get ahead of what could be one of his teammates in the structure in 2024 (Felix Rosenqvist), one of his teammates in the testing program (Colton Herta), or his current teammate in the figure of the veteran. Scott Dixon, in addition to the aforementioned power. Between the exchange of times, the session was interrupted four times for two red flags, three of which were due to incidents on the track, and which consumed more than the 15-minute margin not to encroach on the 60 minutes of activity on the track.

Initially, the session was stopped after 25 minutes to carry out a round 2 inspection due to the complaint of some drivers due to the irregularity of the terrain, even though the Race Direction was satisfied with the condition of the area. A posteriori, Callum Ilott found the wall from turn 1 by braking too much, losing the whole last half hour and not being able to drive smoothly; Jimmie Johnson spun out of Turn 8, and Hélio Castroneves hit the wall at the same turn in the final minutes, while behind a Scott Dixon who got into the runoff on the way out wide.

TORONTO INDY FREE 1 RESULTS