TORONTO —Rinus VeeKay set the fastest lap lap in the Sunday morning warmup session ahead of the Honda Indy Toronto.
The No. 21 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet went around the 11-turn, 1.786 mile street circuit in 59.8987 seconds to average 107.341 mph. Second fastest was Alexander Rossi ahead of Alex Palou, Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden in the top five.
2022 Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson was sixth ahead of Graham Rahal, Simon Pagenaud, Jack Harvey and Callum Ilott in 10th place.
The majority of the field spent the first third of the session using it as pit stop practice owing to the tight and confined nature of pit road with 25 cars in this race, the most since 25 cars also started in 2012.
The biggest problem for teams and drivers was Turn 3. Graham Rahal, Will Power, Devlin DeFrancesco and polesitter Colton Herta among others all had issues in the hardest braking zone at the 11-turn, 1.786 mile circuit. Herta’s issue resulted in his car stalling, requiring race control to call for the only red flag in the session.
That resulted in Herta having to serve a five minute penalty for causing a red flag in warmup.
The 85-lap race will be broadcast live at 3:00 p.m. ET on Peacock with the green flag scheduled at 3:30 p.m. ET.