By Austin Lawton, Staff Writer
Kyle Kirkwood is the king of the street courses so far in the 2025 IndyCar season.
Kirkwood navigated the streets of Detroit, Michigan, taking his second win of the season at the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix on Sunday, leading 48 laps along the way in the No.27 Siemens/AWS Honda for Andretti Global.
The American driver from Jupiter, Florida won the first street course race of the season at Long Beach on April 13 and is still the only driver not named Alex Palou to win an IndyCar race this season. Palou still has a commanding 102 point gap to Kirkwood, who is third in the points.
Sunday’s win brings Kirkwood his fourth career win and plenty of confidence heading into the summer stretch of the season.
“Huge day in general for Andretti Global and the No.27 car,” Kirkwood said. “We’ve had a hell of a couple weeks, I’m not going to lie, and this is an exclamation point on everything that we’ve done. Andretti is phenomenal at street courses and it’s so good to capitalize on it. I felt pretty robbed of a couple wins here the past couple years where I felt like we definitely should have won and we had pace on everyone, and finally this year we were able to get it done, not from lack of challenge, either.
“I had to pass some cars out there. I found myself in the fourth, fifth position, I think, a couple times and had to claw my way back, so fortunately we had pace to do so, and fortunately I made it stick. It was some low-percentage moves, I’m not going to lie, that I made. But you have to take street courses. Any move you make is a low percentage, so fortunately they stuck, and we were able to come home with the win.”
The race at Detroit on Sunday set up a double-podium for the Andretti Global crew as Colton Herta in the No.26 Gainbridge Honda ended the day in third. Sandwiched between the Andretti drivers on the podium was Santino Ferrucci in the No.14 Sexton Properties Chevrolet for A.J. Foyt Racing. Being on the second step of the podium is Ferrucci’s best career IndyCar finish and the second race in a row where an A.J.Foyt Racing driver has finished second, after David Malukas did so at the Indianapolis 500 on May 25.
“It feels great,” Ferrucci said at the end of the race. “Honestly, the strategy plays into everything that we do, especially at road and street courses. It’s very tough, and I can’t thank the team enough. This is more deserving of them than it is even of me. We probably drove to 11th minus the strategy just running our race. Mike and Adam, C.J., they all made great calls on the stand to pit us when they did and got lucky with the yellow when it came out, cycled us to the front action.
“I had no idea I was the leader because there were cars going around the pace car in front of me, and then they stopped me, and I was like, ‘Oh, well, this is a pleasant surprise.’So it was pretty cool. I just couldn’t hold off Kyle in the end. I don’t know what I did with the tires, but I couldn’t hold off Will [Power] and I definitely didn’t think I was going to hold off Colton. The red flag really saved us. I was able to get back around Will and come home second.”
Ending the day in fourth was Team Penske’s Will Power in the No.12 Verizon Chevrolet and in fifth, with his best career IndyCar finish was Kyffin Simpson in the No.8 Ridgeline Honda for Chip Ganassi Racing.
SEE: Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix Results
The drivers made it through Turn One clean and Kirkwood, who started third was overtaken by Palou on Lap One, moving the American down to fourth, but Kirkwood would repay the favor, getting the position back a lap later.
Kirkwood would make his first pit-stop on Lap 11, running used black primary tires on the front of the car and brand new tires on the rear of the car, in order to help with the out-lap. The Andretti Global pit crews of Kirkwood and Herta put on a season-best performance, getting their drivers out front at crucial points in the race.
Herta pitted two laps later and maintained the lead over Kirkwood. On his out-lap, Herta ran side-by-side with Nolan Siegel for several corners and that opened the door for Kirkwood to pass both cars and take the presumed lead of the race on Lap 14.
After the leaders in Herta and Kirkwood made their first pit stops, two caution flags flew in quick succession.
On Lap 14, the first caution flag flew for an incident with both Meyer Shank Racing cars. Felix Rosenqvist driving the No.60 and Marcus Armstrong in the No.66 tangled in Turn Eight, resulting in both cars stopped at the exit of the turn.
The caution flew on Lap 19 as Devlin DeFrancesco lost a wheel and drove the car around to the pits with just three tires. The Canadian in the No.30 EVTe Honda for Rahal Letterman Lanigan lost the right rear tire after missing Turn 4 and when getting the car turned around, lost the tire in the burnout.
From Lap 21 to 67, the race would be green, with drivers settling in and strategies starting to take place. As the net leaders in Kirkwood, Herta, Palou, Power were among the leaders on the lead strategy after starting on the alternate, green-walled tire. The goal was to ditch the tire as soon as possible and get on the primary, black tire.
Ferrucci and Simpson were leading the charge for the drivers on the alternate strategy after starting on the primary tire. Both drivers made stops on Lap 31 and 38, respectively and cycled out in the mid-pack.
Kirkwood and Herta would put together on Lap 50, with Palou and Power getting new tires on Lap 49. Power would beat Palou out of the pits as the Andretti duo kept control of the race after their stops. Kirkwood would beat Herta out of pit road, as Herta blended between Power and Palou.
The caution would fly once again on Lap 67, shaking up the drama in the race. The No.90 Chevrolet, driven by Callum Ilott, made heavy contact into Turn 1 ending his day in Detroit.
This caution allowed the whole field to get an extra pit stop, with Kirkwood and Power coming out in first and second. The only drivers that did not pit, were the front-runners on the alternate strategy: Ferrucci, Simpson and Armstrong.
The Ilott caution would prove to be the saving grace for the three drivers as they hoped to make it to the end of the race. The trio played their cards right and pitted laps before the caution flew for Ilott. Ferrucci and Simpson boxed on Lap 65 and Armstrong on Lap 64, putting them in front of Kirkwood and co.
The race would be green for only two laps as on Lap 72, Palou, the championship points leader and the winner of the Indianapolis 500, went into the tire barriers in Turn One, with a little nudge from Malukas, ending his day in 25th. This is Palou’s worst finish of the season and his worst overall finish since Road America in 2022, when he finished 27th.
The race would go green on Lap 75 and Ferrucci led the field into Turn One. Kirkwood made quick work of Armstrong, passing him on Lap 76. On the next lap, Kirkwood would pass Simpson to go into second and hunt down Ferrucci.
Kirkwood would pass Ferrucci on Lap 78 and check out until the last caution of the race brought the field back together.
On Lap 84, 17 laps to go in the race, the suspension broke on the No.45 Mijack Honda of Louis Foster. The car hit the outside wall on the long straight going into Turn 3, causing him to run into the rear of Rosenqvist, sending both drivers into the tire barriers. The crash brought out a 12 minute red flag with repairs being made to the tire barriers. Both drivers were seen and released from medical treatment.
The three cautions at the end of the race allowed Ferrucci and co to save the grip in the tires and fight for the win off of strategy. Power, Ferrucci and Herta battled out the rest of the podium as Kirkwood took the green flag on the lap 89 restart and never looked back, cruising to the checkered flag.
“I mean, we were really good at restarts for some reason. I couldn’t tell you why. Our pace on restarts was phenomenal. I knew that because of that I had to get by everyone that was in front of me within the first five laps, which I did on the initial start after I got passed by a guy or two, and once again on that restart, and yeah, fortunately it paid off. The thought process around it was just to take these guys off when opportunities arise, but opportunities came much quicker than I anticipated, and we were able to get them pretty quickly and then get ourselves back into the lead. It worked out really well.”
The IndyCar series will take a week off and then head to World Wide Technology Raceway to take on the 1.25-mile oval on June 15 at 8 p.m.