LIVE BLOG: 2014 Honda Indy Toronto

SATURDAY

7:24 PM ET (Steph) — We’ve had an announcement regarding the plans for tomorrow. There will be two 75-lap races. Race 1 will roll off with a rolling start at 10:30 AM, and race 2 will begin at 4:15 PM with a standing start. There’s no time for another qualifying session, so race 2 will be gridded by the entrant points as they were entering the event (i.e., before race 1 tomorrow). The grid for race 1 will be reverted to the results of today’s Firestone Fast 6 qualifying session without the to-the-back penalties that had been announced for Power, Montoya, and Briscoe.

On the promoter side, Honda Indy Toronto President Charlie Johnstone has confirmed that all Saturday-only tickets will be honored for Sunday. Kiosks will be set up at all the pedestrian entrances to facilitate exchanges. It will not be possible in all cases to keep fans in the same seats as Sunday-only tickets have already been sold, but all efforts will be made to keep fans as close to their original seats as possible.

Both races will be televised in the US on NBC Sports Network; we’re still waiting for confirmation that Sportsnet will do the same in Canada. We’re also still waiting for the full-day schedule to find out how the support series races will be affected.

So, the upshot is that there will be two races tomorrow, both paying full points, with less than four hours in between. Yeehaw! It’s far from ideal, obviously, but it sure does make things interesting!

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6:30 PM ET (Steph) — By way of update, there will be no IndyCar race today on the streets of Toronto. The rain picked up shortly before they were due to start, and the visibility (particularly on the backstretch) was so bad that the drivers were saying they couldn’t see the walls or each other. After several bunches of pace laps and several incidents — including a spun-out pace car — and with usable daylight dwindling, they were ultimately left with no options.

We’re waiting on a revised schedule tomorrow to see how it will look and whether it will have two races on it — and how long those races might be. We’re staying on it and will report back with updates as we receive them.

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2:34 PM ET (Steph) — I’m back after spending a couple of hours this morning co-hosting Raceline Radio on Sportsnet 590 The Fan. We had a long chat with Honda Indy Toronto President Charlie Johnstone and a surprise drop-in from Scott Goodyear to talk IndyCar’s future and the Canadian racing scene. Looking forward to heading back down there tomorrow morning for the same shift, 10 AM to 12:30 PM.

Indy Lights qualifying just wrapped up, and it started raining part way through, which sent no less than three cars into the barriers. One of them was points leader Gabby Chaves, but he was still fast enough to hold onto a front row position. Toronto local Zack Meyer also came around at one stage but continued, and Juan Piedrahita got into the wall just past the tires in turn 8. The damage on him wasn’t so bad until another car got into him (apologies, but it’s a bit hard to track things here and I’m not even sure who it was) and did some right rear damage. The polesitter for tomorrow afternoon’s race will be Gabby Chaves’s teammate at Belardi Auto Racing, Alex Baron.

Also worth noting: Pro Mazda title contender and Canadian hotshoe Scott Hargrove won the Ultra 94 Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada by Michelin race this afternoon. He mentioned in his post-race quotes that he’s on a weekly program in that series, but his team will undoubtedly continue to be very pleased with the results that he’s posting. Let’s hope he gets a shot at claiming that title.

Up next, Robby Gordon’s Speed Energy Formula Off-road presented by Traxxas trucks are running their first race of the weekend. This one will be a huge hit with the Toronto crowd since it was confirmed yesterday that Paul Tracy will pilot one of these again this year and he never fails to entertain around this place. After that, we’ll head into the pre-race ceremonies for the race 1 at the Honda Indy Toronto.

We’ll be back after the checkered for our post-race coverage. In the meantime, head over to Twitter for live updates throughout the race @MoreFrontWing.

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