Gearing Up: Toronto Favors Andretti Global, Chip Ganassi Racing
Alex Palou enters Sunday's Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto with a commanding 129-point lead over Pato O'Ward as the NTT INDYCAR SERIES heads into the fourth and final street race of the 2025 season.
The duo split victories last weekend at Iowa Speedway, with O'Ward earning his first victory of the season in Saturday's Synk 275 powered by Sukup while Palou captured his series-leading seventh win in Sunday's Farm to Finish 275 powered by Sukup.
Despite dominating this season, Palou has yet to win on Toronto's 1.786-mile temporary street circuit. In three career starts, he has been eliminated in the opening round of qualifying each time, starting 22nd, 15th and 18th, respectively. But the three-time series champion has impressively raced through the field to finish sixth, second and fourth.
On the other hand, O'Ward has struggled on street circuits in 2025. His average finish across the three prior street races is 10.33. In three Toronto appearances, the Arrow McLaren driver has finished 11th, eighth and 17th.
Sunday's 90-lap event could be a damage-mitigation race for O'Ward and his Chevrolet counterparts. His Iowa win marked the first win for Chevrolet this season while Honda has claimed 11 of the 12 races, including all three on street circuits and six of the nine podium finishes.
This season's street races began with Palou edging Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon in Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding on March 2. Kyle Kirkwood then topped Palou in the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach on April 13 and Santino Ferrucci's No. 14 AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet in the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear on June 1.
Kirkwood leads all drivers with a 2.33 average finish on street circuits this season. However, a disastrous Iowa weekend, including a crash in practice and another crash in Race 1 – he finished 26th and 18th in the races -- cost him 67 points and dropped him from second to fourth in the standings. He trails Palou by 180 points. On the bright side, Kirkwood finished runner-up to teammate Colton Herta (shown in photo) last year in Toronto.
History favors CGR and Andretti Global this weekend. Their drivers swept the Toronto podium last year and have combined for nine of the last 12 top-three finishes at Exhibition Place. Gaining ground on Palou and Dixon in Round 13 of the 2025 season won't be easy.
Dixon's seventh-place average finish on street courses this season ranks third behind Kirkwood and Christian Lundgaard (sixth-place average). Lundgaard, who is fifth in the standings, earned his only INDYCAR SERIES victory here in 2023 while driving for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and with three consecutive top-eight finishes in Toronto eyes a second Arrow McLaren win in three races.
The first practice in Toronto is 3:05 p.m. ET Friday on FS2, FOX Sports app and INDYCAR Radio Network. The series returns to the track at 10:30 a.m Saturday for the second practice session in advance of the three-round knockout NTT P1 Award qualifying session scheduled to begin at 2:35 p.m. Both Saturday sessions will air on FS1, FOX Sports app and INDYCAR Radio Network.
Sunday's schedule features the pre-race warmup at 8:30 a.m. ET (FS1, FOX Sports app and INDYCAR Radio Network) before the 90-lap race at noon on FOX, FOX Sports app and INDYCAR Radio Network.
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Fox Sports
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"After a week of rest and recovery, I'm looking forward to being back in the car." Drivers have accelerometers in their ears, so INDYCAR doctors know how hard the hit is when they evaluate the driver. Any accident that registers 80Gs in any axis or direction is required to return for further evaluation. INDYCAR, like most sports leagues, uses the King-Devick test from the Mayo Clinic among its tools. INDYCAR's head neurologist, Dr. Bert Vargas, along with INDYCAR medical director Dr. Julia Vaizer, typically does the evaluation to clear a driver to return. Vargas serves as a member of the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee and is also a sideline unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant for the NFL. Earlier this year, Marcus Armstrong had to return to the medical center at Indianapolis a few hours after an accident to be cleared for the next session. Siegel had to revisit Sunday morning and was not cleared. Arrow McLaren team principal Tony Kanaan missed a race in 2001 because of a concussion so he knows how hard it is for the driver to sit out. "I crashed in Detroit on Saturday, got a concussion," Kanaan said. "They sat me out in the race on Sunday, but we had Portland next week, and I am sure I wasn't right because that weekend, I was so slow in Portland. I started that and I crashed again in the first lap, and I couldn't understand why. And I felt fine. "We've come a long way, and this is probably one of the worst things because when ... you're looking at yourself, you're perfectly fine, and you think you're fine. Those type of injuries are so frustrating." In the last 12 years, there have been two drivers who have not returned to INDYCAR because of concussions — Dario Franchitti and Simon Pagenaud. Alex Tagliani was the replacement when Franchitti got hurt and Conor Daly was the replacement when Pagenaud got hurt. 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Yahoo
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