O’Ward Gives Flawless Performance In Win At Toronto

TORONTO — Many say that the chase for the IndyCar championship is a ‘foregone conclusion’ with the massive gap that Alex Palou has opened up on the rest of the field. Yet, on Sunday on the streets of Toronto, we were reminded that the season is never over… until it’s actually over.

Pato O’Ward has been chasing Palou all season long, but it was Palou’s turn to chase O’Ward on Sunday as O’Ward and his Arrow McLaren team gambled correctly to put him in position for his second win of the IndyCar season.

“Hats off to the boys and girls at Arrow McLaren, also Team Chevy,” O’Ward said. “I feel like the gist of this year for at least the 5 side, it feels like it’s always a recovery Sunday, always been a recovery Sunday. We keep fighting our way forward. I knew I had such a strong car on the preferred tire for the race. I had a car that I could attack with. I had a car I could really put it where I needed to.”

That was precisely the name of the game for the race: tires. For the first time all season, tires predominantly dictated the pit strategy, not fuel.

The soft tire brought by Firestone for the weekend was extremely fast, but only for just a handful of laps before they significantly fell off. This was illustrated early on when several drivers, including O’Ward, started the race on the soft alternates and immediately ditched them to fulfill their requirement not three laps into the race.

Free and clear to run on the harder primary tires for the rest of the race, O’Ward just had to sit back and let the race come to him.

Colton Herta started the race on pole. He and the Andretti camp oozed confidence coming into the weekend as Herta was the defending race winner, and Kyle Kirkwood showed tremendous speed in practice. However, lady luck was not on their side this time. Kirkwood made a mistake in qualifying that cost him the pole position. He’d start sixth.

Getting caught up in traffic and the pit cycle, both Herta and Kirkwood found themselves eventually fighting through the field trying to make up ground that would ultimately never be completely made up.

The day was also once again terrible for Team Penske. After the first round of pit stops, Scott McLaughlin found the wall on pit exit when the lug nut holding his left rear tire on came off, which sent his car out of control. It would be his second DNF (Did Not Finish) result in a row. Josef Newgarden was collected in a wreck with Jacob Abel after a restart later in the race.

“Wrong place, wrong time,” is all Newgarden had to say of it to the FOX broadcast before walking away to the privacy of his motorhome.

Overall, Team Penske now has 12 DNFs this season, which is the most all-time in a season in team history.

The cautions appeared to be playing into the hands of Alex Palou, who led 37 laps of the 90 allotted for the race. But, having started on the black primaries, he had to pit twice over the race’s final 50 laps. O’Ward, having satisfied his tire requirement early on, was able to do it in one fewer stop than Palou. This cycled O’Ward to the lead and Palou outside the top ten.

O’Ward’s primary challenger over the last 30 laps, oddly enough, was Rinus Veekay. Driving for Dale Coyne racing, a team that has not had a podium finish in quite a while, Veekay was impressive managing his push-to-pass and tires to stay competitive late in the race. After finals stops though, O’Ward was far quicker and drove away from Veekay for the duration.

“I was feeling so good on the (primary) tires all weekend really,” said O’Ward. “We were just struggling to get the alternates to work in qualifying. Sadly, that’s the one you need to transfer. But I knew we had a great car under me to race with, and (the crew) nailed it on the strategy.”

O’Ward collected his ninth career win in the NTT IndyCar Series, but also sliced 30-points off of Palou’s lead in the championship. Palou had entered the weekend 129-ponts clear.

Palou’s lead heading to the next race at Laguna Seca next weekend is now 99-points. That is still a large deficit to overcome with just four races remaining, but as the old saying goes: “Crazier things have happened.”