Alexander Rossi had two missions for Sunday’s Honda Indy Toronto. The first was, keep his recent momentum going. The second, keep Josef Newgarden as close to his front wing as possible.

See, Newgarden had won two of the last four Honda Indy Toronto races. He started fifth while Rossi started fourth. With Newgarden’s domination on street courses in 2019 (3 top two finishes in 4 tries), he didn’t want to let Newgarden get too far ahead.

See, Rossi knew that Newgarden would likely at some point get by him on Sunday. The Andretti Autosport driver didn’t have very high expectations for himself or his team this weekend. In two of his three previous Toronto starts, he didn’t finish better than eighth.

So, damage control was on his mind. He knew he didn’t have a car capable of winning, so do the best he could with what was given.

Not only did he stay in the hunt on Sunday, he finished ahead of Newgarden too. Now, the gap between the duo is down to four points heading into next Saturday night’s primetime race at the Iowa Speedway.

“I think that we knew going into today that we didn’t have a race-winning car and it would take a little bit of luck to get that,” said Rossi. “The two in front of us drove a great race, so to be able to finish in front of Josef (Newgarden) and get a trophy is a good day. Huge hats off to the No. 27 NAPA Andretti Honda boys – great pit stops, good strategy and we did what we needed to do today.”

The third place run was Rossi’s sixth straight top five finish on the season. It was also his eighth in the last nine races overall.