Winners and losers from IndyCar's chaotic Toronto race
IndyCar

Winners and losers from IndyCar's chaotic Toronto race

by Jack Benyon
7 min read

Toronto delivered a typically bonkers IndyCar street race with crashes, alternate strategies and action. The only atypical item was Alex Palou not winning the race!

With just four races to go in IndyCar this year, we're getting down to deciding who will finish second on back, with some big fights to claw back ground or maintain well-earned positions.

Here are The Race's winners and losers from Ontario.

Winner - Marcus Ericsson

Marcus Ericsson deserves a medal for putting up with the adversity he’s faced this season, and he’ll be hoping Toronto is the team emerging from the other side of it.

It was his first top five of the season - after his second at the Indy 500 was taken away for an Andretti rules infraction - and came after running a similar strategy to O’Ward, pitting early to get rid of the soft tyres and running hards to the end.

With the 500 result he'd be 14th in the points not 19th, so that'd be a still poor but better than it looks championship position, given Colton Herta's only 40 points ahead of that.

Loser - Meyer Shank

Marcus Armstrong’s run of six top 10s came to an end as he finished 14th despite qualifying third, as contact with Kyle Kirkwood in the pits earned him a drive-through.

Felix Rosenqvist had a rollercoaster Iowa weekend and Toronto wasn’t much different, sustaining early front wing damage, a mid-way slow puncture and then finally he crashed with only four laps to go in a very disappointing race.

Luckily the hard work done by both drivers keeps them sixth and seventh in the championship, but they can’t afford more weekends like this if they want to stay there.

Winner - Pato O’Ward

Pato is basically racing for second in the points at this point, but that would be his highest championship result and the fact that he’s the only Chevrolet driver to win a race, and to do it twice, is really impressive.

His win had all the ingredients of a somewhat typical IndyCar win; an initially off-sync strategy, robust racecraft and excellent pace, the fastest in-lap of the race, the sixth fastest out lap and poise and composure under the pressure of a grid all spread out on different strategies.

While a wheel-banging move with Will Power was borderline, his late bombs and overtaking moves were often really impressive and hard to do repeatedly in such an even playing field.

We wrote recently that we think we’re seeing the most complete, consistent and refined O’Ward in his career so far, and this weekend backs that up.

O'Ward reckoned he knew it would be a good day when a bird "dropped a load" on his front right tyre, which he thought would be good luck.

It certainly was for McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown's who got to see his first IndyCar win in person.

Loser - Santino Ferrucci

Ferrucci’s crash in morning warm-up didn’t leave enough time for repairs and Ferrucci had to miss the race.

It brought to an end an excellent run of results from the Indy 500 onwards where he averaged a finish of 7.71, and it drops him from 10th to 12th in the championship.

Winner - Callum Ilott

After two crashes in two races at Iowa, Ilott needed to deliver a strong performance and this was the answer.

His eighth place is Prema’s best result on any type of track this year alongside a pair of top 10s scored by Robert Shwartzman at Gateway and Iowa respectively.

It came despite needing a new front wing such was the Toronto chaos, he was caught up in the lap 37 Jacob Abel crash which caught out a number of competitors.

That allowed a stop to fill with fuel, setting up an advantageous strategy for the rest of the race and his pace on the hard tyres was really, really strong. A much needed boost.

Loser: Alex Palou

It’s Palou’s first finish outside the top eight all season - he didn’t really ‘finish’ at Detroit even though IndyCar awards points basically after you start the race - so that’s a loss.

Luckily, it doesn’t matter as he can lose 24.5 points per race over the final four events and still take the title.

Winner: Graham Rahal

Add Graham Rahal to the ‘drivers on this list who’ve had really tough seasons’. 

A fifth-place qualifying wasn’t an uncommon range for a Rahal Letterman Lanigan car to be in this year, it’s been the race finishes that have been the issue but Rahal only lost two spots to take seventh.

Remarkably, that’s only his second top 10 of the year.

The team was fourth quickest in the pits and a tidy three-stopper delivered a solid result.

Loser - Team Penske

Toronto summed up Team Penske’s 2025 season quite well, with a loose wheelnut sending Scott McLaughlin into the wall and Josef Newgarden ending up with Jacob Abel’s Dale Coyne Racing-run machine atop his car.

Neither Penske driver could be blamed for either incident, with “wrong place, wrong time” being Newgarden’s accurate summary.

Will Power got to the finish at least, despite contact with Christian Rasmussen, but he finished 11th - remarkably the fifth race this year in which Penske has failed to have at least one car inside the top 10.

It now has just four weekends to avoid a first win-less season since its 1999 horror show.

Things aren’t that bad right now. Penske could conceivably win a race with any of its three drivers. But it’s going to need to shed this horrendous luck first and probably find a little of its own. - Josh Suttill

Winner - Kyffin Simpson

On road and street courses from Detroit, Simpson’s average finish is sixth, which shows how remarkable Simpson’s improvement and results delivery has been in the last four races as Toronto marked his first IndyCar podium.

Not bad from 13th on the grid.

He’s still one of the youngest drivers in the series at 20 having graduated to the series really early to do his learning here.

If he continues like this, he will be the dream complement to Palou and Scott Dixon, mixing it up with their rivals and scoring strong results for himself.

Really, really impressive second half of the season so far, which few saw coming.

Loser - Alexander Rossi

Alexander Rossi has had a run of really bad luck recently.

The first half of the year made it look like a top 10 in his first season at ECR was likely before a fuel issue in the Indy 500, a rear-suspension failure in Iowa and an innocuous-looking wall-kiss at Toronto putting him out, despite many other drivers doing the same thing and escaping unscathed.

It means his 18th in the championship looks worse than his pace has shown and that’s a shame.

Winner: Rinus VeeKay

We’ve written extensively about VeeKay’s ace season despite his crew only coming together a week or so before the season at the Dale Coyne team which struggled massively last year without a top 12.

A second top five of the year was executed with a strong strategy. He stayed out early to gain track position, then went long on his second stint, which meant when the lap 30 caution came, he could pit and push to the end of the race with only one more stop.

On the last stop he was overcut by O’Ward, but he looked assured leading the race and certainly wasn’t out of place up front which is testament to his and the team’s work this season.

He’s 11th in the points now! What a season given the team’s relative resources.

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