Toronto IndyCar: Josef Newgarden tops first practice

Newgarden, who comes into the weekend off the back of his first podium of the season at Iowa Speedway last Saturday, claimed P1 right at the end of the session with a 1m00.2385s effort.

"For a lot of the session we had a lot of traffic," he said. "At the end we got a clear lap, and managed to put it together."

Will Power left it similarly late to jump up to second, the Penske driver's time 0.2s slower than Newgarden's in the Sarah Fisher Hartman entry.

The pair combined to deny James Hinchcliffe an early hometown boost: the Toronto native had moved into the top spot with a couple of minutes left on the clock, but Newgarden and Power's last-gasp improvements forced the Andretti driver to settle for third.

Helio Castroneves led most of the morning before finally finishing up fourth fastest ahead of rookie Carlos Munoz.

Aside from a spectacular save from Power, who managed to survive a huge moment of oversteer through one of the right-handers, the morning passed almost entirely without incident.

Simon Pagenaud made a brief excursion off the track when he was forced to take to the escape road 20 minutes into the session, but he kept it off the walls and went on to finish sixth fastest.

Pos Driver              Team/Engine        Time        Gap      Laps
 1. Josef Newgarden     Fisher/Honda       1m00.2385s            24
 2. Will Power          Penske/Chevy       1m00.4497s  +0.2112s  20
 3. James Hinchcliffe   Andretti/Honda     1m00.5728s  +0.3343s  16
 4. Helio Castroneves   Penske/Chevy       1m00.6363s  +0.3978s  20
 5. Carlos Munoz        Andretti/Honda     1m00.6514s  +0.4129s  22
 6. Simon Pagenaud      Schmidt/Honda      1m00.8567s  +0.6182s  21
 7. Marco Andretti      Andretti/Honda     1m00.8620s  +0.6235s  19
 8. Ryan Briscoe        Ganassi/Chevy      1m00.8778s  +0.6393s  19
 9. Tony Kanaan         Ganassi/Chevy      1m00.9126s  +0.6741s  23
10. Graham Rahal        Rahal/Honda        1m00.9147s  +0.6762s  24
11. Sebastien Bourdais  KV/Chevy           1m01.0454s  +0.8069s  20
12. Mike Conway         Carpenter/Chevy    1m01.1224s  +0.8839s  21
13. Justin Wilson       Coyne/Honda        1m01.1419s  +0.9034s  19
14. Ryan Hunter-Reay    Andretti/Honda     1m01.1836s  +0.9451s  20
15. Mikhail Aleshin     Schmidt/Honda      1m01.2391s  +1.0006s  23
16. Scott Dixon         Ganassi/Chevy      1m01.2419s  +1.0034s  22
17. Sebastian Saavedra  KV/Chevy           1m01.2496s  +1.0111s  25
18. Charlie Kimball     Ganassi/Chevy      1m01.2619s  +1.0234s  22
19. Juan Pablo Montoya  Penske/Chevy       1m01.2849s  +1.0464s  20
20. Jack Hawksworth     Herta/Honda        1m01.3050s  +1.0665s  21
21. Takuma Sato         Foyt/Honda         1m01.3583s  +1.1198s  21
22. Luca Filippi        Rahal/Honda        1m01.9588s  +1.7203s  21
23. Carlos Huertas      Coyne/Honda        1m02.0296s  +1.7911s  23