Honda Indy Toronto

The Honda Indy Toronto is an annual Indy Car race, held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Originally known as the Molson Indy Toronto, it was part of the Champ Car World Series from 1986 to 2007. After a one year hiatus, it has been part of the NTT IndyCar Series schedule since 2009. The race takes place on a 2.874 km, 11 turn, temporary street circuit through Exhibition Place and on Lake Shore Boulevard. Toronto is classified as an FIA Grade Two circuit.

It is IndyCar's second-longest running street race, only behind the Grand Prix of Long Beach and is the third oldest race on the current schedule (tied with the Mid-Ohio 200) in terms of number of races run. The Toronto Indy is one of seven Canadian circuits to have held an IndyCar race, the others being Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Mont-Tremblant, Sanair, Montreal, Vancouver, and Edmonton.

History
In 1967, the first Indy race held in Canada was the Telegram Trophy 200, held at Mosport Park in Bowmanville, Ontario as part of the USAC Championship Car season. The race was won by Bobby Unser for his first career Indy victory. The Telegram Trophy 200 was again held in 1968 at Mosport, this time won by Dan Gurney. After a nine-year absence, IndyCars returned to the Toronto area for the Molson Diamond Indy at Mosport Park won by A. J. Foyt in 1977 and Danny Ongais in 1978.

In the spring of 1985, Molson Breweries in-house promotional division, Molstar Sports & Entertainment proposed to run a CART sanctioned IndyCar race at Exhibition Place in Toronto. Toronto City Council approved the race by two votes in July 1985 for the race to be held the following year.

The first Molson Indy Toronto was won by Bobby Rahal on July 20, 1986. The event quickly became Canada's second largest annual sporting event, eclipsed only by the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, with three-day attendance figures routinely around 170,000 people.

In the 1996 race, American driver Jeff Krosnoff was killed in a crash with 4 laps remaining. In that same crash, volunteer corner marshal Gary Avrin was killed, and marshal Barbara Johnston also received injuries in the crash; she was treated and released that evening. Adrián Fernández won the race. The name of the race was changed in 2006 from the Molson Indy Toronto to the Molson Grand Prix of Toronto after it was purchased by the Champ Car World Series from Molstar Sports and Entertainment. The name was also changed to distance Champ Car from the rival Indy Racing League (IRL), which had gained the exclusive right to use the "Indy" name after 2002. In 2007, after Molson dropped their title sponsorship to the race, Steelback Brewery signed a multi-year, multimillion-dollar deal to become the event’s title sponsor, renaming it the Steelback Grand Prix of Toronto. This marked the first title sponsorship change since the event started in 1986.

The unification of Champ Car and the Indy Racing League was announced on February 22, 2008, and the Grand Prix of Toronto's future was left in doubt. After attempts were made to preserve the race for 2008, it was confirmed on March 5, 2008, that the race had been cancelled. On May 15, 2008, Andretti Green Racing (co-owned by Michael Andretti) purchased the assets of the former Grand Prix of Toronto. On July 30, 2008, it was confirmed that the race would return to Toronto on July 12, 2009. On September 18, 2008, Andretti Green Racing announced that it had signed a multi-year agreement with Honda Canada Inc. for the title sponsorship of the race, henceforth named from 2009 onward as the Honda Indy Toronto.

In 2013, the race weekend was changed to a 2 race format with one race Saturday and one race Sunday. The Saturday race would feature a standing start while the Sunday race would be a rolling start. After an aborted standing start Saturday leading to a rolling start, teams and officials agreed to try the standing start again Sunday. The Sunday standing start was successful on its first attempt and was the first successful standing start in unified IndyCar series history (the Champ Car World Series had used standing starts late in its history shortly before unification). In 2014, weather forced both races to be run Sunday, exposing the difficulty in logistics of running two races in an already packed schedule. By 2015, both standing starts and the two race format were abandoned.

In 2016, the track layout was modified to accommodate the newly constructed Hotel X Toronto. Under the new layout, the pit lane was moved to the opposite side of the race course, starting at the outside of turn 9 and exiting just after turn 11. This, in turn, made turn 11 a sharper turn than it had been in the previous configuration.

Michael Andretti is the all-time race win leader with seven victories.

USAC (Mosport Park)

 * 1967: Run in two heats of 98 miles (158 kilometers/40 laps) each. Second race stopped after 6 laps due to rain.
 * 1968: Run in two heats of 98 miles (158 kilometers/40 laps) each.

CART/Champ Car/IndyCar (Exhibition Place)

 * 1990: Race shortened due to rain.
 * 1996: Race ended with 1 1/2 laps remaining (93 of 95 laps completed) because of fatal crash on Lake Shore Boulevard. Driver Jeff Krosnoff and a track marshal were killed and the race was stopped near the impact point a lap later.
 * 2014: First race was postponed from Saturday to Sunday morning because of rain. The second planned race is still scheduled for Sunday afternoon which means two races in one day. Because of this, both races were shortened from 85 laps to 65 to compensate for the delay. The second race however was further shortened due to time limit.
 * 2015: Due to Toronto hosting the 2015 Pan American and Parapan American Games, the race was moved to June to avoid conflicting with the games.

NASCAR Pinty's Series
The Indy Toronto circuit is based around Exhibition Place, but the heritage of NASCAR and Exhibition Place dates considerably earlier than the 2010 Canadian Tire Series round at Indy Toronto. In 1958, the 31st round of NASCAR's Grand National (now Cup Series) championship was held at the third Exhibition Stadium (located on the site of BMO Field). That race marked the Cup debut of Richard Petty.



Current series

 * NTT IndyCar Series
 * Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires
 * Indy Pro 2000 Championship
 * U.S. F2000 National Championship
 * NASCAR Pinty's Series
 * IMSA GT3 Cup Challenge Canada
 * SPEED Energy Stadium Super Trucks

Former series
A variety of racing series have previously run as support series on the race weekend. These include:


 * Champ Car World Series
 * Atlantic Championship
 * Barber Dodge Pro Series
 * CASCAR Super Series
 * Trans-Am Series
 * Ferrari Challenge
 * North American Touring Car Championship
 * Canadian Touring Car Championship
 * Motorola Cup
 * North American Fran Am 2000 Pro Championship
 * Canadian Formula Ford Championship
 * Pirelli World Challenge
 * Player's Ltd./GM Motorsport series
 * Honda Michelin Challenge Series
 * F1600 Super Series