He was signed for the rest of the season and then sacked 40 days later. Then, last weekend, Theo Pourchaire was called back up to the McLaren IndyCar team.

The circumstances meant Pourchaire had to star in his own remake of Planes, Trains and Automobiles in getting from Nice in France to Canada in 12 hours to then jump straight in for a qualifying session at a track he’d never even tried in the proper simulator.

So what happened to Pourchaire in Toronto, what did he make of being called up again, could he back again, and what’s the latest on Alexander Rossi, the driver he replaced?

What happened in Pourchaire's race?

Given he was driving the bumpy Toronto track for the first time in qualifying, it was no surprise Pourchaire was near the bottom of his qualifying group - though he did beat regular Sting Ray Robb to secure 26th on the grid.

Not even the steering wheel was the same as when he had last raced for the team in Road America, as Rossi uses a different configuration and also the hybrid unit has been introduced in the time Pourchaire has been away.

As fortune would have it, Pourchaire had stayed in Indianapolis after his sacking - even reportedly visiting the shop of Rahal Letterman Lanigan, which has at least one seat open next year due to Christian Lundgaard's 2025 McLaren move - until just three days before Toronto when he headed home.

He was 26th in the final practice before the race, in which he mostly just kept his nose clean as he brought home a 14th-place finish for the #7 car after what had ended up being a crash-filled conclusion to the event.

What was good and bad?

Ultimately, Pourchaire didn’t produce the kind of pace many of his fans who believe he was fired unfairly for Nolan Siegel would have wanted, but given the lack of preparation and the changes to the car even since his last race less than two months ago it was a steady performance.

He pitted six laps in, under caution, for tyres and to top off with fuel in case that helped with strategy later, but struggled on the soft tyres - he wasn’t the only one - and pitted again at lap 20. For reference, the leaders were able to go 35 laps in the first stint but that was also exclusively on the hard tyre.

He had a few good dices in the races, passing Kyffin Simpson on lap 49/85, but one that didn’t quite go his way was with Linus Lundqvist on lap 55 at Turn 4. Both drivers overshot the corner and Pourchaire picked up a puncture, sending him to the pits again. He reckoned this slip cost him what should've been a top 10 at the end of the race.