Mazda Road To Indy – Honda Indy Toronto Friday – second practice session times and notes

The second Cooper Tires USF2000 powered by Mazda was delayed a few minutes for clean-up from a Porsche GT3 that puked it’s guts on track and didn’t get started until 1:24pm.

With threatening skies, all 13 Mazda powered USF2000 machines quickly took to the 1.755 mile, 11-Turn Exhibition Place street circuit in an attempt to beat the incoming precipitation.

Early in the session Aaron Telitz and Anthony Martin were pushing hard and missed their braking points in Turn 3. Both of them were able to continue. They weren’t the last drivers to test the limits of the braking points, as drivers also took to the run-off areas in Turn 1 and Turn 8.

In what shouldn’t be a surprise, the top three laps of the session were turned by a familiar trio of super sophomores. Aaron Telitz led the way and was followed by Nico Jamin and Jake Eidson.

Nikita Lastochkin, Garth Rickards, and Parker Thompson turned 24 laps, the most in a session that went green for the entire half-hour.

The entire Cooper Tires USF2000 powered by Mazda timesheet is below:

RANK DRIVER QUICK LAP LAPS TURNED
1 Aaron Telitz 1:11.297 21
2 Nico Jamin 1:11.450 22
3 Jake Eidson 1:11.595 21
4 Anthony Martin 1:11.773 22
5 Nikita Lastochkin 1:12.333 24
6 Garth Rickards 1:12.345 24
7 Parker Thompson 1:12.526 24
8 Luke Gabin 1:12.984 19
9 Keyvan Andres Soori 1:13.249 21
10 Yufeng Luo 1:13.395 21
11 Ayla Agren 1:13.809 18
12 Max Hanratty 1:13.854 19
13 James Dayson 1:15.226 19

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From the things that only Steve finds interesting file (V1)

The super sophomore trio of Aaron Telitz, Jake Eidson and Nico Jamin have been 1-2-3 in 68% of all Cooper Tires USF2000 powered by Mazda test/practice/qualifying/race session this year.

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The second Pro Mazda presented by Cooper Tire session of the day got underway on-time at 4:40pm.

After utilizing the Cooper Tire rains in the first session, the 18 Pro Mazda drivers took to the 1.755 mile, 11-Turn Exhibition Place street circuit on slicks. There were certainly some wet spots outside of the mostly dry racing line. The cars were dancing around.

The Mazda powered cars had just hit the track when the red flag flew for a Turn 6 incident between the No. 80 of Raoul Owens and the No. 28 Dalton Kellett. Owens car ended up nosed into the wall at the exit of Turn 6 and was put on the “hook” to be brought back to the paddock. Kellet was able to drive back to pit-lane, but did sustain suspension and wheel damage. The Andretti Autosport crew was able to repair the damage to the K-Line Insulator sponsored entry and he was able to get back on track.

The green flag flew again with 21 minutes to go.

Halfway throughout the half-hour session and the top five were: Neil Alberico, Santiago Urrutia, Garett Grist, Weiron Tan and Jose Gutierrez.

Weiron Tan, who will be looking for his sixth Pro Mazda pole of the season, ended the session on top of the time charts with a

Most drivers were able to complete between 14 and 18 laps.

The complete time sheet for the last Pro Mazda presented by Cooper Tire session of the day is as follows:

RANK DRIVER QUICK LAP LAPS TURNED
1 Weiron Tan 1:10.230 18
2 Jose Gutierrez 1:10.311 17
3 Victor Franzoni 1:10.439 17
4 Neil Alberico 1:10.460 16
5 Garett Grist 1:10.464 13
6 Daniel Burkett 1:10.479 15
7 Timothe Buret 1:10.501 18
8 Santiago Urrutia1:10.640 14
9 Will Owen 1:10.697 17
10 Florian Latorre 1:10.784 18
11 Alessandro Latif1:10.998 17
12 Dalton Kellett 1:11.049 14
13 Pato O’Ward 1:11.362 15
14 Kyle Connery 1:11.573 15
15 Bryson Schutte 1:12.216 17
16 Bobby Eberle(E) 1:14.971 17
17 Jay Horak(E) 1:21.473 6
18 Raoul Owens No Time —

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From the things that only Steve finds interesting file. (V2)

The 1.755 mile, 11-Turn Exhibition Place street circuit at the Honda Indy Toronto has one speed trap located at the end of the back straight just before Turn 3.

The fastest driver through that speed trap during the first Indy Lights presented by Cooper Tire series practice was SPM with Curb-Agajanian’s Scott Anderson who achieved a top speed of 165.222mph, only 9.8mph off the top Verizon IndyCar Series trap speed turned by Marco Andretti during the first practice.

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The Indy Lights presented by Cooper Tire series was the final session of the opening day at the Honda Indy Toronto.

TSO started the session on pit lane and it was certainly much cooler and it had also just start to mist heavily.

Nelson Piquet, Jr., Felix Serralles, Ed Jones and Ethan Ringel were the only drivers to run any laps of consequences before the rain started to fall again. The former Formula 1 driver Piquet ended up leading the way with a lap of 1:06.9849.

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One of the support series for the Honda Indy Toronto is the Porsche Ultra 94 GT3 Cup Challenge Canada. The IMSA sanctioned series was won by Canadian Mazda Road To Indy regular Scott Hargrove in 2014. The Surrey, British Colombia based driver, who made two Indy Lights presented by Cooper Tire starts early this year will be rejoining the Open Road Racing team to contest the two Toronto rounds of the championship. He will be joined by fellow Mazda Road To Indy alum Daniel Morad. The 25 year-old Morad was a race winner in GP3 and made two Indy Lights starts in 2011.

Also present in one of the support series is sometime Mazda Road To Indy driver Matthew Brabham, who is making his Stadium Super Trucks debut.