Scott McLaughlin came up .3223-seconds away from his fourth career NTT INDYCAR SERIES pole on a wild day on Saturday at the Exhibition Place street circuit in downtown Toronto. He had to settle for his seventh career front row start instead.

Now, can he turn that second place starting spot in his No. 3 Dallara-Chevrolet into a trip to victory lane in Sunday’s Honda Indy Toronto (1:30 p.m. ET, Peacock, INDYCAR Radio Network).

“Yeah, it was tough,” McLaughlin said of his qualifying day. “I was sideways at one point on the side of the track, so you just have to really gather your thoughts, and you’ve got to just methodically sort of feel the track and the way that it dries off.”

McLaughlin is confident in the “Thirsty Three’s” to deliver during the 85-lap race a day from now. He felt his car was quick not only in the dry conditions, but it shined when the 1.786-mile track was wet as well.

“We’ve had a really fast car all weekend, so I knew if it dried off, it was going to be okay. But even in the wet conditions with what we got, it was really good,” McLaughlin continued.

“So I would have loved to have seen if we didn’t wait so long between Q1 and Q2 to have a crack at real wet, but yeah, really provided of everyone on the Gallagher Chevy.

“The car was very good. Congrats to Christian. Great lap. I think we benefited a lot by being able to be the last couple to the finish line.

“He still pumped us by four-tenths, and we have to figure that out and see how we go.”

While the field is chasing Christian Lundgaard at the start, the RLL driver doesn’t honestly think that he can hold them off for too long.

“I do think we will be fast tomorrow. I just don’t think we’ll be the fastest car. I don’t think we’ve shown that pace throughout the weekend,” Lundgaard admitted.

Somebody has got to win so it might as well by McLaughlin.

Penske and Ganassi have combined to have won 7 of the last 8 street course races and 13 of the last 19 of them in general. Only Andretti Autosport (4 wins) and Arrow McLaren Racing (1 win) have won in this span.

With Penske and Ganassi having won five straight Honda Indy Toronto’s and combining for 5 of the 9 podiums this season on street courses and have won 8 of 9 races this season, it may be a race between these two on Sunday.

They have 4 of the top 7 starters including 2 of the top 4.

Ganassi is 2-for-3 on street courses this season and also won the final two races of them last year to give them 4 wins in the last 5 tries.

While Team Penske won the 1st three street races last year, Ganassi was next best in class on these circuits with finishes of 2-8-9-23 at St. Pete, 3-6-20-22 in Long Beach and 3-6-7-22 in Detroit.

Penske started off 3-for-3 with 3 different drivers on street courses in 2022, but have since gone 0-for-5. In just 2 of the last five, they had the second-place finisher.

They went 9-10-15 in Toronto and 2-6-11 in Nashville a year ago.

This year, they went 7-13-17 in St. Pete, 6-9-10 in Long Beach and 2-7-10 in Detroit.

That’s just two podiums in the last five tries after having three straight wins. Can they make up for it in Toronto, a place where they’ve won 3 of the last 5 races here or do they slip further back?

The only other teams up front are RLL (Lundgard, 1st), Arrow McLaren Racing (O’Ward 3rd, Rosenqvist 5th) and Andretti Autosport (Kirkwood 8th, Grosjean 9th). Even if you go back to 11th, you have another Ganassi driver (Marcus Armstrong) in 10th and the final Penske driver (Josef Newgarden) in 11th.

But, with factoring in Andretti and McLaren, that’s 10 of the top 11 starters. They also went 1-12 on Friday.

Since 2022, these four have won all 27 races and if you go back to 2021, they’ve won 37 straight. Furthermore, in this Aeroscreen era (57 races), they’ve won 94.7% (54-for-57) of them.

The last non “Big 4” team to win was Meyer Shank Racing in 2021. In fact, these teams didn’t win the Month of May at all with Ed Carpenter Racing’s Rinus VeeKay winning the GMR Grand Prix and Helio Castroneves the Indy 500.

The only other time they didn’t win was the 2020 Indy 500 with RLL and Takuma Sato.

That’s it.

The separation is real. You have the top 2, the next two, then the rest.

Penske has won 22 times. Ganassi has won 21. Andretti has won 7 and McLaren 4. The other teams are RLL, ECR and MSR each with 1.

So, with McLaughlin as the top starter among them, plus with Andretti’s cars all starting from 8th on back, Alex Palou starting in 15th, it might as well be McLaughlin.

In 5 of the previous 6 times that he’s started on the front row, he’s finished in the top two. That includes all three of his wins with one of those being from 2nd last July at Mid-Ohio. The only one not was last month in Detroit to where he had a run-in with Romain Grosjean for which cost him time. He’d finish seventh.

However, this is a prime spot for McLaughlin to end on another run. After that seventh-place finish in Detroit, he was eighth in Road America and fifth in Mid-Ohio. He started sixth and finished ninth here last year.

Then it’s to Iowa to where he was third in Race 2 last season. After that it’s to Nashville to where he was on the pole and finished second. With two straight second place starts on street courses now, why not a third in Music City USA. Next after that is the Gallagher Grand Prix on the IMS road course for which he was fourth last July.

That leaves Gateway, Portland and Laguna Seca left. He finished 3rd, 1st, 6th in those races.