2026 Ontario Honda Dealers Indy at Markham

Ericsson Runs Down Grosjean in the Closing Laps to Win Markham's First Race

Marcus Ericsson spent the middle of Sunday afternoon driving qualifying laps in a race car, and it bought him everything he needed at the end.

Ericsson won the inaugural Ontario Honda Dealers Indy at Markham from fourth on the grid in the No. 28 RVI Group Andretti Global Honda, taking the lead from Romain Grosjean in Turn 6 with five laps remaining and pulling away to a 7.5305-second victory. It is his first win of 2026, the fifth of his career and his first in the Greater Toronto Area. It ends a drought of 63 starts stretching back to St. Petersburg in 2023.

The race that produced it was the one everybody had predicted. Six cautions covered 25 of the 90 laps, five drivers retired after contact and only 14 cars finished on the lead lap, on a circuit where Christian Lundgaard had warned Saturday night that there might be carnage.

Ericsson's strategy was built on staying out when almost nobody else could afford to.

"I felt all the way through, especially in the race, that I had a really fast car," Ericsson said. "There were key decisions there where we decided to stay out. I was pushing really hard to stay out. I know it was not ideal because I needed a ton of pace to be able to pull out the gap needed to come out in a decent place."

The gap materialized in eight green-flag laps between the final restart on Lap 62 and his stop on Lap 69. Ericsson turned the fastest lap of the race, a 1:14.2690 on Lap 68, and stretched a 0.5554-second advantage into 13.2994 seconds before handing the lead back to Grosjean.

"It was fun, that middle stint when I was doing quali laps, two, two and a half seconds faster than the rest of the field," Ericsson said. "That was a good time."

He rejoined seventh and needed 13 laps to fix that. Ericsson passed Will Power for third on Lap 82 in an incident that briefly turned untidy, cleared Alex Palou for second on Lap 84 and caught Grosjean two laps later. What made the last pass straightforward was fuel.

"When I got by Will, there was Alex and Romain in front of me. I knew they were on a bit of a fuel save," Ericsson said. "They were doing some lifting, coasting down the straights. When I hunted them down, I could see their weaknesses quite quickly. With Romain, I know he was lifting quite a bit at the end of the straight. I sort of knew where I wanted to make my move on him."

Grosjean had seen it coming and could do nothing about it. The Dale Coyne Racing driver, who started 13th in the No. 18 BMax Honda, took the lead for the second time on Lap 70 and was asked to make it last.

"At the end of the race I knew we had to go 37-ish laps on the tires, on the fuel. That was going to be a challenge," Grosjean said. "When I saw the 28 pitting, Marcus, I thought there was no way he would catch us. The 10 was behind me, which is always a worry. Opened the gap. We should be safe. Next thing I knew, the 28 was coming."

The margin at the flag understates how completely he emptied the car.

"Honda did amazing with us," Grosjean said. "They worked so well, gave us the exact fuel number to cross the finish line with nothing left in the tank."

It is Grosjean's first podium of the season and his best finish in the Toronto area. It is also his sixth career runner-up finish and his first podium in 44 starts, since Barber in 2023 — and a considerable outlier in a year whose previous best finish was eighth at St. Petersburg, against an average finish of 17.4. He was candid about what second place felt like, given that his last victory in any category came in GP2 at the Hungaroring in 2011.

"I cried a little. I'm not going to lie. But control what you can control," he said. "I had no more fuel, no more tires, no more anything. I just gave it all."

Behind him came the most improbable result of the afternoon. Power finished third in the No. 26 TWG AI Andretti Global Honda after starting 25th and last, a gain of 22 positions that made him the race's most improved driver. It is his fourth podium of 2026, after Arlington, Road America and Portland, in a season that has yet to produce a win for a driver whose most recent came at Portland last year. He was in the last row because of a grid penalty his own crew had caused, replacing an engine overnight after his Practice 2 crash in Turn 10.

"A lot of those guys got two hours' sleep last night. Repaired a car from Practice 2, do an engine last night," Power said. "I wanted to have a good day for them."

His own account of the drive was mystified.

"I don't know how we ended up there. Actually we had a really good car on restarts. Definitely made a lot of positions there," Power said. "My tires were pretty done at the end there. Just sort of holding on. But the others had to save fuel, so that helped get us up to third."

The contact with Ericsson on Lap 82 was, by both accounts, a message that arrived too late. Power had told his team he would concede the position on the back straight to protect his gap to Palou.

"He didn't get the message, or it wasn't quick enough for him. Yeah, miscommunication," Power said. "I didn't even look in my mirror. I just turned."

Ericsson agreed there was nothing in it. "Obviously it was very unfortunate that we touched. I saw him coming. We talked about it. Even the next straight he was going to let me go," he said. "We touched, but we were all square, we were side by side. There's no hard feelings."

Palou finished fourth in the No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda from 11th, and the afternoon did more for his championship than the result suggests. Kyle Kirkwood, his closest pursuer, made contact in Turn 3 on Lap 54 and stopped after secondary contact at the entry to Turn 4, retiring the No. 27 Sam's Club Andretti Global Honda after 53 laps. Palou now leads by 133 points with four races remaining, up from 110.

Andretti Global was aware of the stakes while running its own cars first and second.

"We just talked about, 'Hey, Marcus has got a lot of pace, tire and fuel advantage, we need to take the fight to Palou,'" said Ron Ruzewski, Andretti Global's team principal and Power's strategist. "Obviously we're always thinking about the big picture. We need to take points away from Alex to keep Kyle in the conversation at all."

Pato O'Ward completed the top five in the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet after his own six-position penalty dropped him to 23rd at the start, with Lundgaard sixth, Rinus VeeKay seventh and Scott McLaughlin eighth.

The attrition began early and never really stopped. Mick Schumacher hit the barrier in Turn 4 on Lap 14, ending the rookie's race in the No. 47 ENVE Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda before a sixth of the distance had run. Marcus Armstrong spun in Turn 5 on Lap 31 and was later given a 10-second stop-and-hold for failing to follow the direction of INDYCAR Safety. Contact in Turn 8 involving Scott Dixon, Dennis Hauger and Christian Rasmussen brought out a third caution, which race control reviewed without taking action.

The fourth was the one that decided the race's shape. Louis Foster, who had converted his first pole of the season into a commanding opening stint, hit the barrier hard in Turn 3 on Lap 43 and was out after 42 laps, having led 32 of them. Nolan Siegel, who inherited the lead on Lap 33 when the leaders pitted and held it for eight laps, later drew a drive-through for avoidable contact after tangling with Josef Newgarden in Turn 5 on Lap 59.

Schumacher, Rasmussen, Foster and Kirkwood were all seen and released from the INDYCAR Medical Unit, according to INDYCAR Deputy Medical Director Dr. Angi Fiege.

For all the interruptions, the racing itself was relentless. The 242 position passes were the most on record for an Indy car race in the Greater Toronto Area, out of 258 total, and the lead changed seven times among five drivers.

Ericsson thought the circuit deserved much of the credit, and rated the win accordingly.

"It is a bit like a road course, but with walls around," he said. "There's no margin for error. You're in the wall straightaway."

Asked where it sits among his victories, he set the 2022 Indianapolis 500 aside and put this one next. It is his fourth win on a street course, and the first that has not involved a red flag.

"I think today we won it on pure pace," Ericsson said. "We were the best car out there, and we won it because we played the game and we pushed when we needed to and we delivered when we needed to."

Grosjean, who has spent the season describing tracks he doesn't much like, was unreserved about this one.

"Smooth tarmac like this makes the racing so much nicer for us compared to some other places," he said.

Mayor of Markham Frank Scarpitti gave the command to start engines at 12:15 p.m. with the ambient temperature at 74 degrees and the track at 89 degrees under partly cloudy skies, according to Firestone engineers, with relative humidity at 61 percent. The race ran 2:16:22.2341 at an average speed of 83.156 mph over 189 miles.

The series stays on unfamiliar streets next weekend, moving to Washington, D.C., for another circuit no one has driven.

Lundgaard Leads Markham Warm-Up as Late Penalties Send Kirkwood to Row 11

Christian Lundgaard spent three sessions describing a car he could not read. On Sunday morning he had the fastest one on the Streets of Markham.

Lundgaard led the 30-minute warm-up at 1:14.4411 in the No. 7 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet, 0.2865 clear of Rinus VeeKay in the No. 76 Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet. Louis Foster, who won the NTT P1 Award on Saturday evening, was third in the No. 45 Desnuda Organic Tequila Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda at 1:14.8141, with Romain Grosjean fourth in the No. 18 BMax Dale Coyne Racing Honda and Kyffin Simpson fifth in the No. 8 Sunoco LP Chip Ganassi Racing Honda.

The session ran green from 8:40 to 9:10 a.m. without interruption — the first clean session of the weekend, after five red flags across Saturday's practice and qualifying.

Pace was well off what the circuit surrendered under Saturday's evening light. Lundgaard's morning best was more than a second slower than Foster's pole lap of 1:13.2383, and only seven drivers in the field improved on times set the day before. Lundgaard was the only one of those inside the top 10 of the weekend's combined order, where he now sits sixth; Grosjean, Simpson, Scott Dixon, Marcus Armstrong, Nolan Siegel and Christian Rasmussen made up the rest of the group that found something on Sunday morning.

Lundgaard had anticipated a difficult start to the day, warning after qualifying that a cool surface would work against the tires before drivers could get temperature into them.

"Tomorrow morning we'll definitely see some graining because it's going to be cool and you're going to cook the surfaces before you get the car up to temperature," he said Saturday night.

He had also been blunt about how the weekend had gone to that point.

"Just been on the struggle bus all weekend. Balance has been very tough to read," Lundgaard said. "I feel like we just lacked a lot of grip to the faster cars."

Foster, who spent the weekend as a driver everyone else was measuring against, said Saturday he would not know much about his race car until the morning session.

"We'll see. I mean, we haven't ran in race trim yet," Foster said. "We'll get a better feel for that when we get to warm-up."

The grid that emerged afterward looks considerably different from Saturday's qualifying order. INDYCAR Officiating announced three additional six-position penalties Sunday for unapproved engine changes following qualifying, hitting Pato O'Ward's No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet and both the No. 26 and No. 27 Andretti Global Hondas of Will Power and Kyle Kirkwood. They join the penalties announced Friday for Alexander Rossi, Rasmussen and Armstrong after the Portland weekend, bringing the total to six cars docked six positions apiece.

Kirkwood pays the biggest price. Second in the championship and 110 points behind Alex Palou with five races remaining, he qualified 16th and will start 22nd, on a circuit where every driver who has been asked about passing has hedged. O'Ward starts 23rd, Armstrong 24th and Power 25th.

Foster starts from pole with Lundgaard alongside on the front row, followed by Scott McLaughlin, Marcus Ericsson, Dennis Hauger and VeeKay. Palou, whose qualifying ended against the Turn 10 barrier in Round 2, starts 11th — one position better than he qualified, gaining from the penalties applied ahead of him.

The tire designations point to two distinct approaches. Every driver from the front row back to 15th will start on alternate Firestone tires except McLaughlin, who starts third on primaries. From 16th back, only Kirkwood and Armstrong take the green on alternates, with Felix Rosenqvist, Siegel, Santino Ferrucci, Caio Collet, Josef Newgarden, Rasmussen, O'Ward and Power all beginning on primaries.

Palou was 19th in warm-up in the No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, his first running since the qualifying crash, and O'Ward completed just 12 laps, the lowest total in the field. Power ran 20 laps and was 17th; his weekend best remains a lap from Practice 1 on Saturday morning.

The field completed 505 laps in the session and 1,655 across the weekend. The Ontario Honda Dealers Indy at Markham goes green at 12:22 p.m. ET over 90 laps and 189 miles, with FOX and FOX One carrying the race in the United States and TSN in Canada.

Foster Takes Markham Pole on Used Tires as Turn 10 Claims Palou

Louis Foster spent six minutes of the Firestone Fast Six annoyed at himself, on a set of tires everyone else had discarded, and left the Streets of Markham with the fastest lap of the weekend.

Foster's 1:13.2383 in the No. 45 Desnuda Organic Tequila Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda won the NTT P1 Award by 0.3969 of a second over Christian Lundgaard and set a qualifying record on a circuit that has yet to be raced. It is Foster's first pole of 2026 and the second of his IndyCar career, following Road America last season.

The margin was built on a decision that separated him from the rest of the Fast Six.

"Definitely when I saw everyone put the new reds on in the Fast Six, I was a bit more worried," Foster said. "As soon as we were all going, the reds seemed to be all right." He had run used alternate tires while his rivals went to new rubber, leaving him with two new sets for Sunday against one for Lundgaard.

The state of mind helped too. Foster had scraped into the Fast Six from sixth in Round 2, and said the near-miss sharpened him rather than shook him.

"To be honest with you, I drove Fast Six pretty pissed off because we made a massive mistake in Fast 12," Foster said. "I got through by a bee's tail, nothing. We should have cleared that easily. I was pretty annoyed. I was driving with a bit of a rage."

He was more specific about the lap itself: "Pretty much every corner was damn perfect on that lap. There really wasn't much more in it."

Everything else about the session was defined by a single corner. Turn 10 removed Will Power from Practice 2, took Josef Newgarden out of Round 1 and ended Alex Palou's qualifying in Round 2, when the championship leader made contact and stopped in the runoff at 7:39 p.m. The red flag cost Palou two fast laps and the ability to advance under rule 8.3.6, dropping him to 12th in the segment. He was seen and released from the INDYCAR Medical Unit, according to INDYCAR Deputy Medical Director Dr. Angi Fiege.

Lundgaard, who had been talking to Jack Harvey about the corner before the session, laid out why it keeps catching people.

"I mean, I think we've seen it's bumpy, it's tight, it's fast," Lundgaard said. "There's a tire wall in the way."

Asked whether the tire wall sits in the right place, he said it does, then explained what makes Markham's version harder than its closest analogue.

"If they would have made the corner a lot sharper and a lot slower, it would be very similar to Turn 10 at St. Pete," Lundgaard said. "But again, that has a concrete curb with the barrier obviously separated, so you have visibility. Here you don't. If there's a car in the wall, you can't see them, then you're going to be in it, as well."

Foster, who starts from the front of it, thinks the race will be calmer than qualifying was.

"That corner's really hard in qualifying spec because you're coming at it at an angle and a bump. It's really difficult," Foster said. "I think once we get into the race spec, everything slows down a little bit. That brake zone will become a bit more calm."

He was candid about how close he came to joining the casualty list. "I've had brushes with that wall today a few times. It's a nasty wall. But yeah, luckily we didn't hit it. I plan not to hit it tomorrow."

The qualifying record changed hands three times in 80 minutes as the circuit kept improving. Palou set the first mark at 1:14.0990 topping Group 1, Malukas lowered it to 1:13.4759 topping Group 2 in the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, and Foster took it in the Fast Six after the sun had dropped.

That last detail mattered. Lundgaard said the low evening sun was the session's most difficult variable until it disappeared.

"I actually thought the Fast Six was a lot more pleasant because the sun had gone down so you didn't have it right in your face," he said. "That braking zone going into 10 was super tricky."

He also credited the surface for coming to the drivers as the day went on.

"I think we saw a lot of track evolution, which I think purely just comes from obviously rubber being laid down, but also the track getting cleaned up," Lundgaard said. "There's a lot wider of a line in qualifying than there was in P2, at least for me. A lot more areas that you could explore and use, where I feel like the margins were very slim."

Round 1 was attritional on both sides of the draw. Caio Collet stopped between Turns 5 and 6 nine minutes into the Group 1 running and was penalized two fast laps with no advancement, ending a weekend in which the rookie had been second overall in Practice 1. In Group 2, Power stopped in the Turn 4 runoff, forcing an extension so cars could complete a timed lap, and Newgarden hit the barrier in Turn 10 after the restart. Both drew the same penalty. Pato O'Ward lost his best lap to that point for causing a local yellow that affected another competitor, though he retained the ability to advance.

The format explains some counterintuitive lines on the results sheet. Cars eliminated in Round 1 fill positions 13-25 with Group 1 drivers taking odd numbers from 13 to 23 and Group 2 drivers the even numbers from 14 to 24 plus 25, ranked within their own group rather than against each other. Romain Grosjean's 1:14.2574 in 14th is quicker than Kyffin Simpson's 1:14.5349 in 13th for that reason, and Kyle Kirkwood's 1:14.3654 lands 16th.

Marcus Ericsson topped Round 2 at 1:14.0190 in the No. 28 RVI Group Andretti Global Honda and qualified fourth, with Scott McLaughlin third in the No. 3 Gallagher Insurance Team Penske Chevrolet. Dennis Hauger was fifth in the No. 19 Ault Block Chain Dale Coyne Racing Honda, reaching the Fast Six in his first visit to a circuit no one had seen, and Rinus VeeKay completed the six in the No. 76 Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet.

Lundgaard's front row came from a weekend he described as a running argument with his car.

"Just been on the struggle bus all weekend. Balance has been very tough to read," he said. "I feel like we just lacked a lot of grip to the faster cars."

He expects Sunday to be eventful, and pointed away from the obvious passing zone.

"I probably would say turn six, after the long back straight," Lundgaard said. "I assume everyone's thinking it's going to be into turn five. It's not. You'll make it around, but you're going to lose more by running two wide on exit."

His evidence came from the support categories that shared the circuit Saturday. Asked how many lines there are into Turn 5, he pointed to the USF Pro 2000 race: "Everybody who tried to stick their nose in had a worse exit and got passed by another car."

The NASCAR Canada race informed his read on the opening sequence as well.

"There is some sections that's going to be a potential disaster. I think the first three corners are tough just from a visibility perspective," Lundgaard said. "I think we saw it in the NASCAR Canada race: when you're following close behind, it's very easy to clip that inside wall. The next inside wall shows up real fast."

Starting positions remain unsettled. Six-position grid penalties for unapproved engine changes after Portland still apply to Alexander Rossi, Christian Rasmussen and Marcus Armstrong, who qualified eighth, 15th and 22nd. The official lineup will released following Sunday's warm-up.

Foster Tops a Faster, Rougher Practice 2 as Power Crash Ends His Afternoon

The Streets of Markham gave up nearly a second on Saturday afternoon, and it took something from Will Power in exchange.

Louis Foster led Practice 2 with a lap of 1:14.1793 in the No. 45 Desnuda Organic Tequila Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda, 0.8122 quicker than the benchmark Alex Palou had set in the morning and the fastest lap anyone has turned on the new 12-turn, 2.1-mile circuit. Marcus Ericsson was 0.0140 behind in the No. 28 RVI Group Andretti Global Honda and David Malukas another 0.0007 back in the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet — the top three covered by less than two hundredths of a second.

Kyle Kirkwood was fourth in the No. 27 Sam's Club Andretti Global Honda and Mick Schumacher fifth in the No. 47 ENVE Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda, the best result yet for a rookie class that has spent the day proving the point it made before anyone drove the place. Dennis Hauger was eighth in the No. 19 Ault Block Chain Dale Coyne Racing Honda and Caio Collet ninth in the No. 4 Combitrans Amazonia AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet, putting all three rookies inside the top nine.

The session cost Power his afternoon. Thirty-three minutes into the opening all-cars segment, the No. 26 TWG AI Andretti Global Honda made contact with the barrier in Turn 10 and stopped beyond the runoff with significant damage to the right side and rear wing. Power climbed from the car without assistance from the AMR INDYCAR Safety Team. INDYCAR did not resume the all-cars running, throwing the checkered flag five minutes later, and Power did not record a lap in the Group B segment that followed. His weekend best remains the 1:15.3152 he set in Practice 1, the only driver other than Marcus Armstrong still carrying a morning time into qualifying.

Turn 10 had been flagged as a problem corner hours earlier. Malukas, asked after Practice 1 whether he had felt the bump on entry, said he had — and that it was more demanding than the track walk suggested.

"Yes, on entry. There's definitely a big bump on entry," Malukas said. "I love it. Bumps just add technicality. You're trying to figure out how to get around it from a braking perspective. It's difficult, but I think it's nice, it's good."

He had also singled out the corner as the one thing that surprised him about the circuit.

"I would just say almost entry of turn 10, how much speed you're actually carrying through that," Malukas said after the morning session. "I thought on the track walk it was going to be easy flat. It's on edge, for sure."

Collet's session ended the same way Power's did. The rookie stopped in the Turn 8 runoff after contact at 3:53 p.m., bringing out the second red flag of the afternoon and climbing from the car unaided. INDYCAR reopened the Group A segment at 3:59 p.m. for a single timed lap before the checkered flag.

For Malukas, the afternoon was a straight reversal of the morning. Brake temperatures had cost him his Practice 1 group running and left him without a read on the alternate Firestone tire; he responded by topping Group A at 1:14.1940 on a seven-lap run.

"We get into an issue where tires are ready and brakes aren't," he had said of the morning. "It's something that obviously we got to work on."

The pace itself came from an unexpected direction. Conditions were considerably hotter than Practice 1 — sunny skies with the ambient temperature at 77 degrees and the track at 119 degrees according to Firestone engineers, up from 85 degrees on the surface in the morning, with relative humidity down to 54 percent. Lap times fell anyway, which points to a circuit still taking on rubber rather than one responding to the weather. Malukas had predicted the improvement after Practice 1, though he had attributed it to cooler evening conditions still to come.

"It's going to be in seconds," he said. "Especially if it's cooler tonight, that's even better for us. It's going to be fast."

Armstrong, whose 1:15.4426 from the morning still stands as his weekend best, had forecast what an evening qualifying session might look like on a circuit this unforgiving.

"I imagine it's going to be a red flag festival," said Armstrong, driver of the No. 66 SiriusXM Canada Meyer Shank Racing Honda. "Everyone is going to be pushing like crazy. It's an easy place to make a mistake, especially now with no grip."

Two red flags in Practice 2 did nothing to argue with him.

The field completed 580 laps in the session and 1,150 across the day. Qualifying for the NTT P1 Award runs from 6:30-8 p.m. ET, with FOX One carrying the opening half hour and FS2 covering the remainder — the last chance to learn anything before a grid is set for Sunday's 90-lap race.

Palou Sets the Benchmark as Markham Finally Goes Green

The Streets of Markham took its first NTT IndyCar Series lap 19 hours later than scheduled, and it took Alex Palou about 40 minutes to establish that the circuit's opening benchmark would be his.

Palou's 1:14.9915 in the No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda came during the 40-minute all-cars portion of Practice 1 and survived everything that followed. Neither of the two 12-minute group segments produced a faster lap, despite a surface that every driver expected to speed up as rubber went down.

Caio Collet came closest. The rookie in the No. 4 Combitrans Amazonia AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet was 11th in his Group A run, then produced a 1:15.0454 in Group B — the quickest lap of either group segment and enough for second overall, 0.0539 of a second off Palou. Louis Foster was third in the No. 45 Desnuda Organic Tequila Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda at 1:15.0728, with Scott McLaughlin fourth in the No. 3 Gallagher Insurance Team Penske Chevrolet and Will Power fifth in the No. 26 TWG AI Andretti Global Honda.

The full 25-car order covered 2.4032 seconds, and one line of the timing sheet came out perfectly level: Marcus Ericsson and Marcus Armstrong both recorded 1:15.4426, identical to four decimal places, with Ericsson scored ahead of Armstrong on the tiebreaker.

Three red flags interrupted a session the field could not afford to lose. Ericsson spun and stopped in Turn 4 at 10:25 a.m., restarting and returning to pit lane under his own power, and drew a five-minute time penalty for causing a red flag. Eight minutes after the restart, contact by Kyffin Simpson left debris in Turn 6, his No. 8 Sunoco LP Chip Ganassi Racing Honda continuing with damage; Simpson received the same five-minute penalty and finished the session with just 11 laps, fewer than any other driver. A third stoppage at 11:23 a.m. for debris between Turns 4 and 5 after a wall brush ended the Group B running early enough that INDYCAR extended the segment to give cars a single timed lap.

David Malukas, third in the championship, spent his group time fighting the car rather than learning the circuit.

"We've been dealing with it, especially just me and my car, just trying to build brake temp," said Malukas, driver of the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet. "We get into an issue where tires are ready and brakes aren't. It's something that obviously we got to work on."

The cost was specific and awkward given the compressed schedule: he leaves Practice 1 without having evaluated the alternate Firestone tire.

"Now we don't have a read on the reds and only a few hours to figure it out," Malukas said. "Thankfully we got a good read from Scott and Josef."

What he did take away was an emphatic endorsement of the surface, which had drawn praise on the track walk Friday and delivered on it.

"Yeah, I love it. I think it's fantastic. Super smooth," Malukas said. "I think this probably is taking the lead on smoothest street course that we've had."

Asked what it displaced, he named St. Petersburg as the runner-up. He also described a track that changed underneath the field lap by lap.

"I think track progression was massive," Malukas said. "When you look at the first few laps, there was still dust coming from my air intake into my eyes. I was blinking a lot to try to clean up my view. I would say by lap four or five, a lot of that got cleaned up, then the track grip started to build."

The simulator work most teams completed proved reliable in layout and unreliable in topography.

"Also simulators, it's tough to picture elevation. On the sim it was flat," Malukas said. "In real life you get a good elevation going up into the hairpin."

Armstrong, seeing the circuit for the first time in the No. 66 SiriusXM Canada Meyer Shank Racing Honda, found less grip than the praise for the asphalt might suggest.

"Yeah, it was slipperier than I expected. I was expecting a bit more grip," Armstrong said. "Maybe this afternoon it's going to become a little bit nicer. Initially it was like driving on ice."

The hairpin drew his sharpest assessment. He and Felix Rosenqvist had gone in expecting the outside line to work; nobody could make it.

"Yeah, it's a very tricky corner. Zero grip," Armstrong said. "You're like sliding in, sliding mid corner and sliding out. Yeah, it's a bit all over the show."

He also raised a question about the tire allocation itself, one that will matter more when qualifying arrives.

"Also a bit of a question mark on the tires really because, well, the red is meant to be the grippier tire, but from my view, it's not so," Armstrong said.

Malukas expects the lap times to fall substantially, and both drivers pointed to the same reason — a session in the evening rather than the middle of the day.

"It's going to be in seconds," Malukas said. "Especially if it's cooler tonight, that's even better for us. It's going to be fast."

Armstrong's forecast was blunter.

"I imagine it's going to be a red flag festival," he said. "Everyone is going to be pushing like crazy. It's an easy place to make a mistake, especially now with no grip."

The session ran under mostly cloudy skies with the ambient temperature at 71 degrees and the track at 85 degrees, according to Firestone engineers, with relative humidity at 74 percent. The field completed 621 laps.

Practice 2 follows at 2:30 p.m. ET, with qualifying for the NTT P1 Award from 6:30-8 p.m. ET — three sessions in a single day for a field that had never seen the place before this morning.