From position 15 he appeared palou to the race of Toronto after a soggy ranking that placed him behind all title rivals: Scott McLaughlin (2nd), Duck O’Ward (3rd), ericsson (4th), Dixon (6th) and newgarden (11th) they had an opportunity to bite into the 110 points that the Spaniard had over his teammate Dixon. An important but not decisive distance. As the race was going to be, valuable for the Barcelonan but not definitive for the championship. But it was tremendous for Palou, spectacular. A recital of who in the middle of a comeback suffered a touch that took down his front wing. And so he ran the leader for more than half the race to finish in a more than good second position that could have been better without the incident that weighed him down when he was going for victory, which was for lundgaard. But the fundamental thing: Palou came out behind all his rivals, ran more than half the race with a damaged car and not only defended himself, he finished ahead of all of them and extended his lead in the general to the 117 points. A video game drive, with superpowers. “I don’t even know how I did it, the car was going well despite the spoiler,” Palou said as he got out of the car.
They started the 85 laps in the urban area of ​​Toronto with a variety of tire choices, Palou with hard ones. It didn’t take long for the first pileup to take place at the end of the group that left the first casualties and did not affect the order of those in front, nor Palou, who starting from the middle of the pack gained two places to get 13th.
The break ate nine laps and opened windows to different strategies, to make the final result more unpredictable. In the relaunched Palou he attacked, with a touch included, Hertha and grosjeanto try to continue climbing and because behind came a certain veekay…It was unsuccessful but soon after on Armstrong to get 12th. Ahead, at this point, everything was still the same and the outlook was only altered by the first stop in the pits to start getting rid of the soft tyres.
After the first pass through garages palou I was already in ninth place in the wake of newgarden, power and DixonLet’s remember that the Spaniard’s teammate was second overall and was already in the crosshairs of the 2021 champion. The first half of the race, therefore, had not gone so badly for the ganassi 10. Yes, it was worse for grosjean, who took his car to the walls for the second yellow flag of the afternoon and who also brought everyone together. Start over with half the race ahead and the strategists’ calculators working like hell.
Before the restart Palou entered the pits once again, started 13th and with the green flag it seemed that everything that had gone well went wrong: Kyle Kirkwood pushed to castroneveshe spun and the Barcelonan in his attempt to avoid it brushed the wall and fell off the hook and cracked his front wing and falling to 16th position. The yellow caused by the Brazilian made the strategies twist once again and Alex He was sixth in the restart and with two exceptional movements over Herta and kirkwood came to the room. That wing was barely holding on, hanging by a thread, with 30 laps to go. It was already more important to survive than to attack what was ahead: McLaughlin, Dixon and veekay
Despite the mess, palou remained in the leading positions, a surprising second with 20 laps to go behind lundgaard. The theory was that he had to get down from there, and the spoiler didn’t help. But the Spanish talent is much more than all that and he defended himself as he could and everything he could. In a crazy race in which he trailed all the title rivals, he was ahead of them. And with half aileron. In the end he won lundgaard, who made his pole good; Palou finished second after a memorable defense, and he puts points in the general classification to all his pursuers. And there is one less race left. That it was anything but easy for Palou. Champion comeback to have an advantage of 117 overall over the second.
This is how the championship goes
