2016 Honda Indy Toronto Analysis: 3 Things We Learned

The 2016 Honda Indy Toronto saw Will Power earn his third victory in four races and put himself back in championship contention. Here are three things we learned from Sunday’s Verizon IndyCar Series event.

1. Power currently has all the power

If you had a nickel for every time somebody has brought up that Power missed the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg due to illness, you’d be rich by now. Everyone keeps mentioning that – but Power has made clear three times now that St. Pete is well in his rear view mirror.

While his win at the Honda Indy Toronto was more a lucky break than the dominating performance he put on at Road America, it’s still a victory and Power has now tied the number of wins he had on the way to the 2014 IndyCar championship.

He’s just 48 points removed from taking the 2016 title lead away from Simon Pagenaud, and that’s less than the number of points for another win (50). If Power can avoid another rough day at Mid-Ohio, where he finished 14th last year, he could sneak in and take the championship just like he pounced on the win at Toronto.

2. The only thing that can stop Josef Newgarden is a curb

After crushing the field at Iowa last week, Josef Newgarden appeared to be poised for another fierce run at the Honda Indy Toronto. The Ed Carpenter Racing driver qualified eighth and looked good at the start.

Even after Juan Pablo Montoya clipped him and knocked off a rear bumper pod, Newgarden was still turning quick laps while he bolted to catch up with the rear of the field, sometimes two seconds faster than the pack.

Then Turn 5 happened.

With the Holmatro safety team unable to do much more than file down the hole in the Turn 5 curb, and the curb a popular part of the racing line, it was only a matter of time until somebody had a problem. That someone was Newgarden, who wound up with the No. 21 car in the wall and finished dead last.

“It is an error on my part,” he said afterward. “I hate to blame it on an injury, but I hit the curb too hard and lost the wheel. I couldn’t hang on to the wheel. I didn’t have the strength to hold on to the wheel.”

It’s also a shame – because just like that he’s back down from No. 2 in the title fight to No. 5 again.

3. Charlie Kimball still doesn’t have many friends

Charlie Kimball is an incredibly nice guy, but he’s not going to win IndyCar’s Mr. Congeniality award any time soon, and certainly not after the Honda Indy Toronto.

Fans may recall earlier this season when Montoya took issue with how Kimball was racing him; the two were not buddies on Sunday either, with Montoya at one point getting pinched between Kimball’s No. 83 Chip Ganassi Racing entry and another car.

But somebody else who might have a gripe with Kimball is Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay, who speared Kimball early in the race. To be fair, that wasn’t Kimball’s fault – he’d been turned sideways by contact of his own – but you figure Hunter-Reay wasn’t thrilled to see Kimball’s car filling his racing line.

Kimball eventually finished 11th in the 2016 Honda Indy Toronto, and hopefully when he gets to Mid-Ohio, he’ll catch a break. Or at least get a hug.

What was your biggest takeaway from the 2016 Honda Indy Toronto? Let us know in the comments.