Kirkwood halts Palou's IndyCar win streak

Kyle Kirkwood took victory at Long Beach from pole position despite multiple complicated strategies interfering with his lead, and became the first person to beat Alex Palou in IndyCar this year.

Kirkwood had spoken earlier in the week of the need to peg Palou back in his pursuit of winning every race this year, and so he achieved that even though Palou was right behind him in the 50th anniversary of IndyCar’s second biggest race after the Indianapolis 500.

The opening laps were absolute chaos, all instigated by Josef Newgarden. He pitted on lap two from 14th to ditch the rapidly degrading soft tyres for the hards, and was over a second per lap quicker than the leaders. That triggered panicked pitstops from most of the field needing to cover off Newgarden’s pace.

It jumped Newgarden to a net sixth, in an absolute strategy masterstroke from his Team Penske crew, before loose seat belts late on put him a lap down and out of contention.

Of course - because this is what he and his Ganassi team do - Palou somehow was another huge gainer in this phase as he jumped to a net second behind Kirkwood and immediately pressured him after the stops having pitted a lap earlier.

It took until just before the mid-point of the race for all of the leading protagonists to clear their soft-tyre stint setting up a far less complicated, ‘run hard tyres to the finish’ strategy.

Kirkwood’s lead was 1.3 seconds before the final stop - despite Palou struggling with a car that wouldn’t turn in - and Palou pitted a lap earlier to cut that to basically nothing as Palou pressured Kirkwood nose to tail on the latter's icy-tyred out-lap.

With 20 laps to go Kirkwood had extended the gap to 2.3s and kept Palou at arm's length to the finish, earning his first win since Nashville in August 2023.

Kirkwood’s second Long Beach win and his third in IndyCar makes him Palou’s closest challenger now, 36 points shy of the winner of the first two races. It's also Andretti Global's first win since Michael Andretti stepped down from his team leader role in the off-season.

McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard was a star of the early running as he started on the hard tyre and did a long first stint where he led the race from starting 12th on the grid.

It looked as if he had lost out to Meyer Shank's Felix Rosenqvist in the final stops but Lundgaard got his head down and reeled him in to dive past at Turn 1 with five laps to go for the final spot on the podium and third in the championship, 12 behind Kirkwood and just ahead of Rosenqvist.

Lundgaard was the top Chevrolet, and best McLaren car for the second race in three since joining from Rahal Letterman Lanigan.

There was a late fight for fifth as Penske’s lead contender Scott McLaughlin came under pressure from Colton Herta, who initially got trapped in traffic on his first early stop reacting to Newgarden and then felt his car was handling so badly he asked if a damper had broken while still pumping in really competitive lap times.

Incredibly, Will Power jumped them both inside the last couple of laps to take fifth from 13th on the grid, ahead of McLaughlin and Herta. 

Scott Dixon took eighth from 14th on the grid, while there were two series-best finishes to round out the top 10.

Sting Ray Robb and Kyffin Simpson were ninth and 10th respectively for Juncos Hollinger and Ganassi.

Robb in particular has been the subject of a lot of criticism in his short IndyCar career - including from this writer after some of his results - but set lap times matching the leaders while he went long on his earlier hard tyre stint, impressively sealing the top 10. He passed Simpson in the closing stages. 

Santino Ferrucci was the biggest mover of the race, up from 27th to 11th for AJ Foyt.