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Practce Report: Honda Indy Toronto

TORONTO (July 15, 2016)--Jack Hawksworth and Takuma Sato took to the streets in Toronto’s Exhibition Place today with both drivers making it into the top 10—in different sessions.

Piloting the No. 14 ABC Supply Honda, Sato was fourth quickest in the opening session this morning with a time of 1 minute, 3.1925 seconds (101.746mph) while Hawksworth was 21st, his time was 1 minute, 4.2346 seconds (100.096mph). Sebastien Bourdais paced the field posting a time of 1 minute, 2.9290 seconds (102.172mph).

In the afternoon session, it was Hawksworth who improved significantly in his No. 41 ABC Supply Honda, moving into 10th with a time of 1 minute, 2.5737 seconds (102.752mph) while Sato was 14th with a time of 1 minute, 2.6863 seconds (102.657mph). Simon Pagenaud took the top spot posting a time of 1 minute, 1.7081 seconds (104.194mph).

Due to the ongoing construction of a new hotel inside the 1.786-mile circuit, the pit lane was shifted from the south side to the north side of the front straightaway. The change resulted in a portion of the old pit lane now becoming part of the race course and part of the old course becoming part of the new pit lane. The new layout proved challenging for drivers and engineers alike as it changed the configuration of several turns and the track surface is even bumpier than it had been in years past.

“Encouraging day,” Sato said afterwards. “It’s always great fun to come back to Toronto, one of the most challenging street courses in the series, so bumpy, so slippery and so unpredictable. It’s all about the challenge and particularly this year because they changed the track layout due to shifting the pit lane, so that made one of the fastest corners [Turn 11] in the street courses become very slow and very tricky as well because it’s off-camber and has concrete patches, etc.  The engineers and team worked really well; we brought the car with a new philosophy of the setup and we made very good progress, so we collected a lot of good data today. Hopefully we’ll be better tomorrow.”

“We struggled a bit this morning and the car wasn’t too great but we made some changes during the break and the car was a bit better this afternoon,” Hawksworth said. “It’s still lacking some grip, not doing what I want it to do, especially the rear. Hopefully we can find a little bit more bite and get ourselves in a better position for tomorrow.”

There is another 45 minute practice tomorrow morning for teams to do their final tune-ups before qualifying which will be broadcast live on the NBC Sports Network starting at 1:30 p.m. ET. The race will be broadcast live on the sister network CNBC Sunday afternoon starting at 2:30 p.m. ET.