By: Ashley McCubbin

TORONTO, Ontario — Returning to the streets of Toronto brought smiles to faces of many Canadian racing fans, including NTT IndyCar Series competitor Dalton Kellett.

“We’re all so happy to be here,” he told NEWS FROM THE PITS following practice on Friday. “It’s a hometown race for us. It’s great to be here with the IndyCar Series. It’s for sure our most important stop of the year so happy to be here, racing against the Canadian racing fans.”

Unfortunately, the first practice session of the weekend on Friday did not allow Kellett to show the speed he would’ve hoped for behind the wheel of the No. 4, as he ranked last on the speed charts.

“It was alright,” he commented. “We had a bit of a tough run on reds there with the traffic and all that, hard to get a lap in there, but we have a decent car. We will see what we can do to make it feel better tomorrow, but it felt good overall.”

Kellett will have another opportunity on Saturday to adjust further on the racecar, ahead of the qualifying session for Sunday’s Honda Indy Toronto. Looking at what they were able to do on Friday, he feels being able to improve the “rolling speed through the bumps,” and brake release speed will allow him to get more out of the racecar.

Thus far in 2022, he has scored a best finish of 17th at Texas Motor Speedway through nine races.

“We’ve had a bit of a tough year,” he admitted. “We’ve had some good performances, but overall we’ve been on the second half of the grid so we have some work to do but we’ve got a good team with A.J. Foyt Racing with everybody working hard.”