Kyle Kirkwood won the inaugural Grand Prix of Arlington Sunday, edging Alex Palou to make himself the first-ever winner of the Texas-based race.
Situated on the streets surrounding the stadiums of the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers, the 14-turn, 2.73-mile circuit provided a memorable outcome for its debut.
The win gave Kirkwood an early lead in the IndyCar standings, where he leads Palou by 26 points after three races. Kirkwood paced an Andretti Global trio of top-four finishers, with Will Power finishing third and Marcus Ericsson landing in fourth.
Fifth-place finisher Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren summed up the team’s dominance afterward.
“This Andretti Honda camp is fricking strong on street courses,” O’Ward said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do if we want to start winning races on outright pace against them.”
Kirkwood executed an impressive pass of Palou on Lap 55, then built a time advantage of five seconds over the ensuing laps.
That effort was nearly for naught when a yellow was issued on Lap 68, bunching the drivers back together. Despite that, Kirkwood sprinted ahead at first opportunity, and when a second yellow warning flew on the 70th and final lap, the victory was his.
“That was so incredible,” Kirkwood said. “Man, did we have some pace. This JM Bullion Honda, Andretti, all these guys right here, they gave me the tools today. It’s because of this race car we won today, because of teamwork.”
Palou acknowledged Kirkwood’s fantastic day, quickly pushing away talk of him potentially catching Kirkwood on Lap 70 if no caution had occurred.
“Not today,” Palou said. “(Kirkwood) did an awesome pass; hats off to him. It was super clean, and it was pretty impressive. We’ll get them in a couple weeks.”
Previous standings leader Josef Newgarden could not make it two wins in a row, finishing 15th to drop to third in the standings.
–Field Level Media
