Advantage Kyle Kirkwood. The pole-sitter in all 11 previous Indy Pro 2000 Championship Presented by Cooper Tires races held on the streets surrounding Exhibition Place has gone on to visit victory lane.
The pole lap is the first of the season for Kirkwood’s Soul Red No. 28 from the RP Motorsport stable. It’s the 20-year-old’s sixth career Road To Indy pole.
Kyle Kirkwood navigates the 1.786-mile, 11-turn Exhibition Place street circuit on the way to his first Indy Pro 2000 Championship Presented by Cooper Tires pole (Photo Courtesy Of Andersen Promotions)
The inside front-row start is the first pole in Toronto for RP Motorsport.
Kirkwood set the pole-winning lap of 68.698 seconds just after the half-way mark of the session, withstanding a strong push from points leader Rasmus Lindh, who will start on the outside of the front row for the second time this season.
Danial Frost, who tapped the wall during the morning practice session will start behind Kirkwood, his best road or street course starting spot of the season.
Lindh’s Juncos Racing teammate Sting Ray Robb will start fourth, the seventh time he’s started in the front two-rows this year.
Parker Thompson, who is second in the championship and won the first two street course races of the year, will have some work to do in Saturday’s race. The Canadian will start the race from the seventh spot.
Due to an extended track clean-up from the Stadium Super Truck practice, the 20-minute qualifying session began four minutes late. The ambient temperature was 74F, and the track temperature was 94F. The humidity was a sweat-inducing 61%, which was down from an uncomfortable 68% during the first NTT IndyCar Series practice.
Lindh, Kirkwood, and Robb all led during the first 10 minutes of the 20-minute session, with Kirkwood’s 68.698-second lap leading the way.
The red flag came out with four minutes remaining for an incident involving Jacob Abel in Turn 4.
The AMR INDYCAR Safety Team got the No. 51 out of the way and the green flag came back to allow drivers one flying lap to improve.
The top 10 when the green flag came back out were Kirkwood, Lindh, Frost, Robb, Rodriguez, Lastochkin, Thompson, Denes, Serravalle, and Enders.
Rodriguez and Thompson were both able to improve their lap times, but their positions did not improve.
Indy Pro 2000 Unofficial Qualifying Results For Race #1
| RANK | CAR NO | NAME | TEAM | QUICK LAP | DIFFERENCE | TOTAL LAPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 28 | Kyle Kirkwood | RP Motorsport Racing | 1:08.698 | –.—- | 15 |
| 2 | 10 | Rasmus Lindh | Juncos Racing | 1:08.939 | 0.2410 | 15 |
| 3 | 68 | Danial Frost | Exclusive Autosport | 1:09.127 | 0.4292 | 11 |
| 4 | 2 | Sting Ray Robb | Juncos Racing | 1:09.169 | 0.4711 | 15 |
| 5 | 5 | Ian Rodriguez | RP Motorsport Racing | 1:09.307 | 0.6090 | 15 |
| 6 | 90 | Nikita Lastochkin | Exclusive Autosport | 1:09.431 | 0.7336 | 14 |
| 7 | 8 | Parker Thompson | Abel Motorsports | 1:09.473 | 0.7753 | 12 |
| 8 | 98 | Phillippe Denes | FatBoy Racing | 1:09.772 | 1.0740 | 13 |
| 9 | 11 | Antonio Serravalle | Pserra Racing/Jay Howard Driver Development | 1:10.286 | 1.5879 | 15 |
| 10 | 7 | Kory Enders | DEForce Racing | 1:10.846 | 2.1478 | 11 |
| 11 | 83 | Charles Finelli | FatBoy Racing | 1:18.196 | 9.4979 | 1 |
| 12 | 51 | Jacob Abel | Abel Motorsports | 1:19.956 | 11.2579 | 3 |
| 13 | 6 | Moises de la Vara | DEForce Racing | No Time | — | — |
The third Indy Pro 2000 Championship Presented by Cooper Tires session of the day, qualifying for the Sunday morning race, rolls off at 6:30 pm, giving the teams four hours to get their PM-18 turned around.