Toronto Indy Lights: Hawksworth claims first pole despite crash

On a morning where red flags put track time at a premium, Hawksworth moved to the top of the timing screens with 26 minutes remaining and them improved several times to keep ahead of points leader Carlos Munoz.

The Brit's final pole time of 1m04.3994s, set on his final lap, proved to be just 0.03 seconds better than his rival's last-ditch effort.

"It was pretty crazy," said Hawksworth. "We never make it easy. I made a mistake on the first lap but after that the car was pretty decent, and I think we can improve it again for the race."

Hawksworth was actually the first driver to be involved in an incident when he hit the Turn 8 barriers on his out lap, but he escaped with nothing worse than a bent front wing.

It was a different story a short time later when championship contender Sage Karam walled his car at Turn 5, bringing out the red flags for the first time.

Later, Zach Veach found the wall at Turn 1, bounced off, and collected the car of Peter Dempsey, bringing the reds out again. Both lost their fastest laps.

Gabby Chaves and Jorge Goncalvez capitalised on the high attrition rate to secure the second row of the grid ahead of Juan Pablo Garcia and Matthew Di Leo.

Pos  Driver             Team      Time       Gap
 1.  Jack Hawksworth    Schmidt   1m04.3994s
 2.  Carlos Munoz       Andretti  1m04.4363s  +0.0369s
 3.  Gabby Chaves       Schmidt   1m04.6693s  +0.2699s
 4.  Jorge Goncalvez    Belardi   1m05.2988s  +0.8994s
 5.  Juan Pablo Garcia  Moore     1m05.3911s  +0.9917s
 6.  Matthew Di Leo     MDL       1m06.1460s  +1.7466s
 7.  Peter Dempsey      Belardi   1m06.2447s  +1.8453s
 8.  Zach Veach         Andretti  1m06.5859s  +2.1865s
 9.  Sage Karam         Schmidt   -