Scott Dixon needed all of his veteran skills and racing skills to hold off a charging Colton Herta at Exhibition Place to win the Honda Indy Toronto, pulling away for his first win of the season and 52nd of his career to tie Mario Andretti for second most in the series. AJ Foyt is the all-time wins leader with 67.
“We struggled a little bit with the Reds,” said Dixon, a six-time series champion. “It was a difficult challenge. It’s great to put an end to this [no wins] generation, fantastic. Back to the winner’s circle”.
The grid was a reflection of Indy’s past, present and future. Behind Dixon and Herta was Felix Rosenqvist in third, followed by Graham Rahal in fourth (his best finish of the season), current series points leader Marcus Ericsson and defending series champion Alex Palou in a race that it contained a little bit of everything.
There were many strategic calls, as witnessed by Rahal and Palou, who both started deep in the field. There was plenty of passing, especially in the middle of the field, and plenty of bent cars and bruised egos during the 85 laps of the 11-turn, 1.786-mile temporary road circuit.
In what turned into a race for fuel economy, race telemetry became unclear for all teams, making it mostly guesswork as to whether the cars had enough left to finish, or if they had more and could they challenged for positions.
By the end, Hertha’s rear tires were too worn for him to really challenge, and he was doing everything he could to keep out Rosenqvist, who was right in his gearbox, told he was free to attack for position, which could have been a little. of a psychological ploy by the Arrow McLaren SP team to shock Hertha into making a mistake.
“We had to fight hard for it,” Rosenqvist said. “We took our opportunities to move forward. First podium with the team.”
The Andretti Autosport driver was able to block the channel, focus on his car and brought it home in second place.
“Felix was really fast and it looked like he was going to have a few more laps,” Herta said. “It’s good to be back on the podium. Hopefully we can continue with consistency. We need to make this a bit more regular.”
All of that only allowed Dixon to pull away from both, making it 52 career wins and a bit of history, all from a nice Sunday cruise at the end.
“It’s great that we still have AJ and Mario in the pits, that we can still talk to them,” Dixon said. “I hope this is the start of a turnaround.”
Unofficial results for the 2022 Honda Indy Toronto
- Scott Dixon
- Colton Heart
- Felix Rosenqvist
- Graham Rahal
- Marcus Ericsson
- Alex Palou
- Simon Pagenaud
- Christian Lundgaard
- Scott McLaughlin
- Joseph Newgarden
- Pato O’Ward
- David Malukas
- Rinus VeeKay
- Callum Ilott
- The Power of Will
- Romain Grosjean
- Helio Castroneves
- Devlin DeFrancesco
- Jack Harvey
- Conor Daly
- Jimmy Johnson
- Kyle Kirkwood
- Alexander Rossi
- Dalton should
- Takuma Sato
