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The IndyCar field finally got its first proper taste of the series’ newest street circuit on Saturday morning, kicking off a packed day of running for the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy at Markham.

This race has taken the place of the Toronto Grand Prix, which had been held for four decades at Exhibition Place in neighbouring Toronto, Ontario. Some teething troubles were always likely, and drivers had spent hours in the simulator ahead of Round 14 of the 2026 IndyCar season.

That simulator work was all they had to rely on before the opening practice session, which had been pushed from Friday to Saturday after the circuit build was left incomplete when the series first reached Canada earlier this week.

The 2.19 circuit features 12 turns, among them the Turn 5 hairpin, where drivers head west along Enterprise Boulevard beneath the Go Transit Stouffville Line before making the tightest possible turn to head back east.

In the simulator, the hairpin appeared to be a wide but clearly defined arc. In reality, the runoff area is much larger, but the usable racing line is far tighter, with every driver trying to stay as close as possible to the inside wall to make the corner work.

After Practice 1, Penske’s David Malukas and Meyer Shank Racing’s Marcus Armstrong spoke to the media, and both were asked about what has quickly become the circuit’s most debated corner.

“Well, the hairpin is definitely different, for multiple reasons,” Malukas said. “Obviously it’s a track change. Also, with simulators, it’s hard to picture elevation. On the sim it was flat. In real life, you get a good bit of elevation going up into the hairpin. Other than that, the simulator was pretty spot on. Some corners feel wider and narrower than others. It was supposed to be more of a big turn. It’s going to be fun, a lot of fun.”

Malukas does not view Turn 5 as a place where drivers will regularly pass or race two-abreast, but he does expect it to become a key action point, particularly after the possible passing area between Turns 4 and 5. “I mean, you go on restarts or starts,” Malukas said. “If everybody is close and you have a run, somebody gets a little bit of a snap out of Turn 5 - still trying to figure out the course, before Turn 5 - Turn 4 into 5, maybe there’s an opportunity to get a move done. If it is clean air running, I don’t think it’s big enough of a run. You can maybe do a dive bomb, but you’re going to go wide when the other guy does the normal corner, so I don’t know.”

“The hairpin... Man, you’re really getting my unfiltered thoughts here because I haven’t even thought about it,” Armstrong said. “I feel like it’s the opposite of what we expected. I expected it to be grippy up high so that you could make it and finish the corner, because it’s obviously so tight, you need to be full up. Felix and I thought the ideal line was going to be up high - high, wide, and handsome - but it doesn’t seem that way. At least no one’s running up there, so there’s zero grip.”

USF2000 was the first series to race on track this weekend, and the junior category immediately showed the kind of issues that can arise as still-bunched fields reached Turn 5, where Ayrton Cahan spun around. Even so, the pack got through without damage.

“It’s going to be interesting in the race, especially lap one,” Armstrong continued. “It’s going to be a bit of a traffic jam. Then even when you’re following people, like on out laps I was following a couple of guys, Siegel and Newgarden; I saw two very different lines from both of them. Everyone has their own philosophy there.”

Nolan Siegel was one of the drivers in practice who chose the wider line, a route that forces the driver to slow almost to a stop before rejoining the straight properly.

The drivers are hoping the circuit will keep evolving through the race, building up rubber and gradually widening the available racing lines through the slow-speed corner.

“As the track evolves, it’s probably going to change,” Armstrong said. “Just like Long Beach, that really tight hairpin, it builds a lot of rubber. The line that you take at the start of the weekend can vary a lot towards the end of the weekend. I guess we’re going to have to keep adapting to that grip.”

“It’s a very tricky corner. Zero grip. You’re sliding in, sliding mid-corner, and sliding out. Yeah, it’s a bit all over the show.”