Sawt Falasteen - Denmark's Lundgaard wins in Toronto for first IndyCar title

The 21-year-old defeated Spanish runner-up Palou, the season points leader, by 11.7893 seconds after 85 laps over the 11-turn, 1.786-mile temporary street course at Exhibition Place.

"I'm pretty drained for energy right now," Lundgaard said. "The car has just been fast all weekend. I said before the race we had a car that was fast enough to win and we pulled it off."

Lundgaard's only prior podium finish in three IndyCar campaigns was a runner-up effort last July on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.

He was the first pole-sitter to claim the victory in Canada since Frenchman Simon Pagenaud in 2019.

Lundgaard, the son of 2000 European Rally champion Henrik Lundgaard, also delivered the first race victory for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing since Japan's Takuma Sato won the 2020 Indianapolis 500.

"This team, they do deserve this," Lundgaard said. "We look at where we were earlier this season and last year at this point, we were nowhere near this so I'm just extremely happy for everybody right now."

Palou was seeking his fifth victory after 10 races this season but came up just short of taking his fourth in a row after wins at Detroit, Road America and Mid-Ohio.

Palou, the 2021 season champion, stretched his season points lead by seven to 417-300 over six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon, the 2022 Toronto winner from New Zealand.

American Colton Herta was third just ahead of Dixon with American Josef Newgarden fifth and New Zealand's Scott McLaughlin in sixth.

G.AbuOdeh--SF-PST