Sunday’s Honda Indy Toronto (1:30 p.m. ET, Peacock, INDYCAR Radio Network) is wide open. Normally, we come into race days with a sense of who could be celebrating on the top step of the podium at races end. In saying that, it’s also a slew of drivers that you could pick from. For Sunday’s 85-lap race in the Exhibition Place street course in Toronto, I think this race is as wide open as they come.

Christian Lundgaard may be on the pole, but he questions on how long he can stay there.

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

“I hope the improvements that we did make from practice 2 into qualifying and the changes that we made will pay off tomorrow.”

In his only other pole, he went from first to finishing fourth. With RLL being improved this weekend, I also wonder how long he can stay out front.

There’s plenty of quick cars behind.

Andretti Autosport has three of them. Unfortunately, mother nature poured water in the form of rain on their fire.

They went 1-2-4 in Friday’s practice, 1-2 on Saturday and had the quickest times on both of the Firestone compounds. Rain was their equalizer which relegated them to 8th (Kyle Kirkwood), 9th (Romain Grosjean) and 14th (Colton Herta).

Herta notes that now that they do have data in the rain, in case that it does on Sunday, they can make their way forward too.

“If it’s a rain race tomorrow, it’s good to get this bit of practice in, so maybe we can make some adjustments,” he said.

Herta was quickest in Saturday’s practice but saw his two-race streak of poles come to an end. He also won the pole last year and finished second in the race. So he has the pace and if it’s dry, watch out even further.

“We were definitely a lot better in the day than we were in the wet,” Herta said. “We seemed to just not have the rear end, struggled with wheelspin. I just couldn’t get the lap time down two what the other guys were doing.”

However, if it rains too, I’d still put my money on Herta too.

The one and only wet race in this Aeroscreen era, Herta won. He started…14th. Now, I get that you may say that’s on a natural road course. I get it.

However, in the 2021 season finale on the streets of Long Beach, Herta was surprisingly eliminated in the opening round of qualifying that day too. That didn’t stop him on race day. He would come through the field to win. His starting spot?

14th.

Scott Dixon won from 14th on the streets of Nashville last year.

If you have a fast car, you have a fast car. You can pass. That’s why rain or shine, I’m not counting Herta out. An Indy Car season ebbs and flows. Herta’s team gave away a win on a pit call in Road America. He gave away a podium by speeding on pit lane the last time out in Mid-Ohio.

Can he use pit lane to win on Sunday via a pit call?

He has one coming…

But, can he truly get there too?

Scott McLaughlin starts second which is his 7th front row start in 44 career starts. In 5 of his previous 6 times, he finished in the top two including all 3 of his race wins.

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?

That’s where Marcus Ericsson with Ganassi could come along. He starts fourth. The last time he started fourth?

He won. At St. Pete.

The driver he beat that day? Pato O’Ward. O’Ward started third in the season opener. That’s the same spot he starts on Sunday.

He was eighth and fifth in practice and if someone outside of Penske or Ganassi wins, it may be him.

“That was a gnarly session,” he said after qualifying. “That kept me on my toes every single lap.

“Obviously, it was a drying race track, and it just kept getting better and better. The No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet was feeling good; it was all about having confidence in it and really attacking some of the corners that you didn’t quite know what they had in store.

“We just kept on pushing, and it’s a second-row start for the team tomorrow. It’s a great starting position to challenge for the podium and the win.”

His teammate Felix Rosenqvist starts one row behind in fifth. He was third here last year, third on the last street race in Detroit and third in practice on Friday. However, a practice crash on Saturday morning left him going to a backup car.

All three McLaren teams worked feverishly between sessions to get the backup car built and Rosenqvist repaid them with a Fast Six appearance.

“It was a hell of a day,” said Rosenqvist. “That was a lot of work, but we ended up P5 in the end, an amazing recovery from a crash in Practice 2.

“I sent it in a bit too hard into Turn 5 and hit the wall. I didn’t really hit hard but unfortunately damaged how the front wing came into the tub, so we had to build a brand new car ahead of qualifying.

“Basically the whole team, the No. 5 and No. 7 crew as well, came out, and there was just like a bee hive around the No. 6 SmartStop Arrow McLaren Chevrolet for three hours between practice and qualifying. We did a seat fit 50 minutes before we jumped in, and we were still doing things for the belts and stuff.

“To end up in the Firestone Fast 6 and P5 after that was just a huge statement to this whole team, having got together and got it done. It was more work than we needed, but we made it through.”

Rosenqvist is facing the harsh reality. He knows that a chance of winning a championship this season is highly unlikely. He enters Sunday’s race 13th in points (-214). To make up that much ground in eight races is a rather tall task to accomplish.

Which is why if Rosenqvist has a shot at a win from here on out, he’ll be overly aggressive in doing so.

“I think like we’re not here to be P12 or P11. I think a win or something like that would be a good way to kind of end at the end of the season,” said Rosenqvist. “I think there’s some good tracks for us coming up. Just kind of — I think more than anything, being able to string together some race results and feeling like we didn’t leave anything on the table would be a rewarding feeling after having some troubled races.

“Yeah, I know we can be there if we just do the job. Yeah, just going for the win.”

Maybe that comes this weekend.

“I think you approach it a bit differently,” he said. “Maybe you try to go for a big result. I think there’s probably no chance for us to win the championship.

“I think I’m mentally more in a head space where I want to go for like — if I can go for a win, I’ll try all in, and I think a lot of us are in the same position because Alex is just taking off in the standings.

“Like I say, we’ve been super fast on one lap, and I think actually the race pace has been mega, as well.

“Just haven’t really strung a result together in the last three, four races. Looking forward to just having a solid week, and I feel like we started good here. Normally a pretty good place for us, so yeah, just looking forward to having a smooth weekend.”

With Andretti also having Kyle Kirkwood starting eighth and Romain Grosjean in ninth, maybe McLaren and Andretti factor into the win on Sunday.

Kirkwood was 1st and 2nd respectively in practice. Grosjean was 2nd and 7th.

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.

Which is why Lundgaard is hopeful more of a strong finish rather than focusing on the race win itself.

Lundgaard though, feels like the momentum is there still and that most of these tracks at the end of the schedule are perfect places to finish even further up than they did a year ago.

“Honestly, right now obviously we’re optimistic, leaving Mid-Ohio,” he told me. “I think last year the best car qualified 13th, which was just not transferring from the first qualifying group. This year we had two cars in the Fast Six and one on the Front Row and me in 5th, and we had Jack up in 11th as well.

“Just looking at that specific race from last year to this year, we moved a lot, and we really struggled at Mid-Ohio last year. Now we’re coming into a track where we didn’t necessarily struggle as much, but we built a good foundation for Nashville at Toronto last year, and we were very competitive at Nashville.

“So coming in here, I do think, just looking at that, that it is sort of a turning point, at least I hope so. We want to continue building on what we’re building on now and basically don’t really leave those performances.”

That’s why he won’t put up much of a fight when he knows he may not be able to stay there.

Speaking of charging, how about Alex Palou who won 4 of the last 5 races, including 4 straight, starting 15th.

This wasn’t a thing I was watching entering this weekend, but with Palou being 12th in practice on Friday and qualifying 15th, this could in theory open the door up for his gap to close some. No matter what, he’ll leave Toronto with the points lead.

But, how much will it drop…or will it at all?

Scott Dixon (-110) is second but was only 11th and 8th in practice and starts seventh.

Josef Newgarden (-116) is third in points but starts 11th after being only ninth in both practices.

Palou could actually get by both in the race.

The thing is, if Dixon and/or Newgarden is going to catch Palou, it has to start with one of them winning on Sunday. Think of the ground that they could make up.

In 2020, Dixon won each of the first three races run and had a top two result in four of the first five overall. In fact, once Dixon won the Aug. 29 race at the World Wide Technology Raceway that year, it was his sixth top two in the opening eight races of the season. With a race on that same track a day later and six overall races left, he appeared to be untouchable.

Newgarden, found himself over 117 points down, going into Race 2 of the St. Louis race weekend. He stormed all the way back and nearly won the title.

How? How does one make up 117 points in six races?

Speed and talent is how and it left Newgarden wondering if he had started better, what if?

In a six-race span to end that season, Newgarden had five top four finishes — four of those in the top two. Dixon, only had one podium and two top fives.

That’s why these two have lived it. They’ve also combined to have won 6 of the last 10 Honda Indy Toronto’s including 4 of the last 6 and 3 of the last 4 at that.

Dixon is coming off of a runner-up finish in Mid-Ohio and has three straight top two finishes here including a win just last season. Newgarden is a two-time winner.

Then it’s a doubleheader at Iowa.

Newgarden has won 6 of the last 8 oval races including being 2-for-2 this season. He’s absolutely a threat at both Iowa and Gateway which make up 3 races in a 5 race stretch.

Dixon may be 0-for-17 at Iowa, but he’s also had five straight top five finishes there too including a pair of runner-ups at that.

Then it’s to Nashville. Dixon won last year and was runner-up in 2022. After is to the Indy road course to where both Dixon and Newgarden have won at. So has Palou, most recently. Then it’s to Gateway.

Palou has finished 11th, 14th, 6th and 13th at Iowa and 15th, 12th, 20th and ninth in Gateway.

The potential is still there.

Honda is 3-for-3 on street courses this season and won the final two of them a year ago. Do they shine at Toronto (Sunday) and Nashville (Aug. 6)? Ganassi is 2-for-2 at Nashville and has won 2 of the last 3 in Toronto. They’ve won 4 of the last 5 street course events overall too.

Where Honda has the street course reign, Chevy has the same on short ovals.

The thing is, the points gap to watch may actually be the one from 4th-7th instead. They starts 3-4-2-6 respectively.