Herta Grabs Pole for Second Year in Dramatic Toronto Qualifying
By
Maahika Banerjee
·
4–6 minutes
The final street circuit of the 2025 IndyCar Season delivered an exciting qualifying round in Toronto with a close battle for pole position between Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood.
The challenging street circuit saw Kirkwood continue to push in order to establish himself as the ‘King‘of street circuits. The Andretti driver led Practice 1, while Herta dominated Practice 2 and their battle on track was equally promising.
Meanwhile, Marcus Ericsson’s #28 Andretti faced brake issues before going out on track; these were rectified by the engineers.
Group 1 saw Kyle Kirkwood lead the pack during early stages of qualifying, only to be overtaken by Scott Dixon with a time of 1:04:715. Meanwhile, Herta, who was the fastest in this group last year, also began showing flashes of pace.
As the session progressed, all the drivers in the bottom half of the time charts began improving their time.
Nolan Siegel suffered a front lock-up as he went over a bump going into Turn 3; this has been a key point of issue for drivers all weekend, and eventually the Arrow McLaren duo, Nolan Siegel and Christian Lundgaard, were eliminated.
All drivers opted for soft tires. aside from Scott Dixon and Kyle Kirkwood who remained on the hards.
While Kirkwood was improving his time and leading at 59.906, Calum Ilott was the star of the show as the PREMA driver set a top time of 1:00:164, momentarily knocking out veteran Will Power out of second place.
The six drivers advancing from Group 1 were Kirkwood, Power, Dixon, Ilott, Rahal, and Foster.
Round 1, Group 2: Armstrong vs. Veekay
Group 2 kicked off with Colton Herta leading early, followed by Josef Newgarden and Pato O’Ward.
Josef Newgarden momentarily climbed to P1 from David Malukas, highlighting Team Penske’s positive performance all weekend as he led with a time of 1:00:673 on the soft tires; the top 5 were also on soft tires.
Christian Rasmussen made slight contact with the wall but impressively held P2 for a bit.
The highlight of this session was the battle between Rinus Veekay and Marcus Armstrong, who kept trading P1. Veekay went quickest with a 1:00.143, but Armstrong responded with a 1:00.098 to reclaim the spot.
Meanwhile, Colton Herta found himself out of the bottom six as he squeezed a final lap that pushed him out of the danger zone and into the top 6.
Fast 12: Kirkwood Breaks into the 59s
Will Power set the early benchmark with a 1:02.794, but Kirkwood quickly leapt to the top with a blazing 1:00.603. Herta followed through enough to land him in the top 6 with a solid 1:01.172 to stay in contention.
Meanwhile in the pit lane, Alex Palou exited ahead of Pato O’Ward in what looked like a potentially unsafe release, though no penalty was issued.
Both Armstrong and Veekay improved massively as the session went on, with Veekay jumping to P3.
Then came the biggest highlight: Kirkwood broke into the 59-second range with a stunning 59.927, while Graham Rahal clinched the final Fast 6 spot by knocking out his teammate Lois Foster from P4.
Pato O’Ward, starting at P10, expressed his thoughts, the #5 Arrow McLaren driver was “very frustrated” working with the green tires and making them work in their favor and acknowledged that they weren’t the only team in the paddock facing issues with the tires.
Though he was happy with the overall pace of the car, which he believes would help them in Sunday’s race.
“I have the strongest car that I’ve had here. For the race tomorrow I feel definitely better than what we’ve had in the past here.”
O’Ward said post-qualifying but eventually believes that it will be tough to make do from P10.
Callum Ilott, who showed a promising performance for PREMA did not advance and will be starting Sunday’s race at P12.
The PREMA driver expressed his disappointment over not being able to get a single lap in because of all the issues caused in Turn 8.
“You got guys going 2 miles an hour on their outlaps, just backing everyone up.”
Eventually Ilott could have advanced if it wasn’t for yellow flags that hindered his chance to get any laps in.
Fast 6: Herta Claims Pole in Final Moments
In the final shootout, Palou briefly grabbed P1 from Kirkwood, while Armstrong jumped to the top with Herta half a second behind.
But it was Herta who found pace at the very end of the session to take pole position with a time of 59.832—his second consecutive Toronto pole and first pole since Detroit.
“We have a great car here, it’s plain and simple.”
Herta shared after qualifying.
Palou finished right behind Herta setting a time of 1:00:107
Kirkwood, despite his early heroics, ended up P6:
“We just gave away a pole, without a doubt,I started the lap and the first time all weekend, I got a huge snap. (The car) has been understeering and the one time I go through (Turn 2) when it matters for pole it bottoms (out) and I have the huge snap. It’s unfortunate.
Qualifying bought out the best of drivers like Marcus Armstrong, Calum Ilott and Rinus Veekay, who displayed stellar performance that didn’t go unnoticed.
Notably, Herta and Kirkwood fought hard for a place at the frontlines that can only get stronger on Sunday’s race.
With Herta’s belief in how good the car is and Kirkwood’s advantage in street circuits as seen in races like Long Beach, Sunday can bring forth an exciting race, as both drivers will be key contenders in securing a win.
Check out our race preview before Sunday’s race to learn more about the challenging Toronto Street Circuit.
