Kyle Kirkwood fended off Santino Ferrucci to notch his second win of the season at the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix on Sunday.
Kirkwood, who previously won in Long Beach in April, moved into second in the season-long points race behind Alex Palou, whose streak of six top-two finishes ended when he crashed with 28 laps to go.
Kirkwood, 26, started the race in third and led 48 laps of the 100-lap race. He took the lead from Will Power of Australia on a restart with 11 laps remaining.
Ferrucci also passed Power but couldn’t catch Kirkwood, finishing 3.5931 seconds behind. Polesitter Colton Herta placed third, Power settled for fourth and Kyffin Simpson of the Cayman Islands was fifth.
Kirkwood managed to win despite a damaged wing on his No. 27 Andretti Honda.
“For some reason, the wing, it was damaged but it wasn’t really causing that much of an issue,” Kirkwood said. “This AWS Honda was unreal all weekend long. There were some challenges out there, that’s for sure. We had to pass our way back through a handful of times. It was definitely not a walk in the park especially with that front wing damage at the end.”
Ferrucci, driver of the No. 14 A.J. Foyt Chevrolet, led eight laps and earned a career-high finish.
“Huge, huge shoutout to this whole team,” Ferrucci said. “We were struggling in qualifying. I struggled, I made a lot of mistakes. I was really hard on myself yesterday, I felt like it was all on me.
“… Kyle was so fast today, so congratulations to him and his team on this win. Man, I’m just happy to bring Chevrolet on the podium.”
Palou, who took last week’s Indianapolis 500 for his fifth win in six starts, ended up in a tire barrier after an apparent nudge from David Malukas. He finished 25th.
“Somebody hit me from behind. It’s unfortunate,” the Spaniard said. “We were looking good to get to the podium.”
–Field Level Media
