INDYCAR

Newgarden secures pole for Toronto GP
The Toronto GP classification was one of the best this year. On Saturday (14), the five big title contenders were on Fast Six in a tight race on a wet and dry track. The best was Josef Newgarden, who beat favorite Scott Dixon with a chronometer reset: 59.449 for the American, 0.25 under the New Zealander.The second row starts with the only Fast Six intruder. Far from the leaders of the championship, Simon Pagenaud had a very positive day and part of the third place, in front of teammate Penske Will Power.Andretti appears with his two main drivers in the third row. Alexander Rossi is fifth, while Ryan Hunter-Reay is sixth. Takuma Sato will start in seventh, followed by the surprising Jordan King. Schmidt Peterson of home owners James Hinchcliffe and Robert Wickens close the top-10 on the grid.Walking on Gabby Chaves' streak, Conor Daly took advantage of the track by drying to advance to the second round and was 11th in front of Matheus Leist, who also had great work in his first group. Tony Kanaan is in 15th place.The first group of the Indy classification in Toronto went to the track punctually at 2:55 pm (in Brasilia). And with a tremendous breakthrough: it started raining between the end of Indy Lights race 1 and the definition of the Indy grid, meaning the track conditions were very treacherous.In the session were: Josef Newgarden, James Hinchcliffe, Scott Dixon, Ed Jones, Tony Kanaan, Graham Rahal, Sébastien Bourdais, Jordan King, Alexander Rossi, René Binder and Conor Daly, replacing Gabby Chaves in Toronto.And the first group was very complicated. Full of incidents from the start, a harsh dispute between King and Hinch and Jones stamping the wall, greatly disrupting the development of the session and being eliminated.This made the group basically decided by a lap of each rider and with the track changing a lot of condition. Dixon was left with 1min12s7, while Rossi made 1min13s3. Behind them the match was much tougher, with King, the surprising Daly, Newgarden and Hinch scoring.
Rahal, who was one of the candidates to pole before the classification, fell out along with Kanaan, Bourdais, Binder and, of course, Jones.
The second group went to the track with the track already much drier. So much so that the beginning of the session was already having people walking thing faster than Dixon, the best of the first group.
In Group 2 they were: Matheus Leist, Robert Wickens, Will Power, Zachary Claman DeMelo, Spencer Pigot, Simon Pagenaud, Charlie Kimball, Zach Veach, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Takuma Sato, Max Chilton and Marco Andretti.


G. P.