Kyle Kirkwood started first and never lost control on his way to his second win around the streets of Long Beach.
“This is a historic race, and I don’t think it’s set in yet for me,” Kirkwood said. “To win the 50th anniversary of this is huge.”
It marks the first time all season Alex Palou (No. 12) hasn’t taken home the win. The Spaniard has been dominant in three of his four full seasons in the series and he remains the only driver to take top fives in all three races this season, finishing second. Had he gotten past Kirkwood, Palou would’ve been the first driver to win the first three races of a season since his teammate, Scott Dixon (No. 9), did so in 2020.
“For me, it was really just keeping Alex at bay,” Kirkwood said. “I needed to save [fuel and tires] as much as him to be able to keep going a lap longer than him… That was the name of the game today — overcut was more powerful than the undercut but he made that undercut look powerful.”
Even though the loss was upsetting to Palou, he still recognized how much success he’s had this season.
“Obviously it’s disappointing because you can’t do it again this year,” Palou said. “In another way, it’s amazing because you’re the only person that had that chance.”
Kirkwood and Palou were among the 21 cars to start on the green-walled alternate tires, with most of the field using a tire they expected to fall away very quickly, but for as little time as possible.
After 10 laps, all 21 had finished. The alternates fell away incredibly quickly, leading Josef Newgarden (No. 2) to bail from them on the second lap. Kirkwood still led the gaggle of drivers who started on the alternate tire after pit stops, but the rest of the order found itself quickly jumbled.
Palou started third and quickly fell to fifth on the start, but jumped to second in the pit cycle. Rosenqvist (No. 60) jumped from his fifth-place starting position to third after the stops. Sixth-place starter Scott McLaughlin (No. 3) passed Colton Herta (No. 26), who started alongside Kirkwood, to move up to fourth.
Christian Lundgaard (No. 7) and the other drivers who started on the black tires found themselves at a strong advantage because of the decision. Lundgaard and Dixon led the alternate strategy and moved from 12th and 13th to fourth and fifth, ahead of McLaughlin and Herta, after their stops nearly 30 laps in.
“I told the team this morning, even before warm-up, ‘let’s try to go aggressive and let’s see what we can do,‘” Lundgaard said. “All options were open for us today and we went off-strategy compared to what we expected most of the field to do.”
Lundgaard had pace all weekend, but only qualified 12th after his fastest qualifying lap — fifth fastest in the session — was deleted after he crashed and brought out a red flag. McLaren had to change Lundgaard’s chassis ahead of the race because an endplate from his wing managed to dent the car body.
“Fortunately and unfortunately, Dallara made some very, very strong parts,” the McLaren driver said. “Just really happy to reward the guys. They had to bring a new car back into play.”
By the second set of pit stops, though, almost every driver had shucked the soft tires. Lundgaard and Dixon took alternates when they first boxed and stayed on them for fewer than 10 laps.
Only a few drivers strapped on hard tires for each of the first two stints. That’s why, halfway through the race, Sting Ray Robb (No. 77) led. The Juncos Hollinger Racing driver had never finished better than 15th on a road or street course.
He was followed by Robert Shwartzman (No. 83), whose best career finish in IndyCar (through two races) was 20th, now 18th.
Then the standings normalized. Kirkwood led the rest of the field, with Palou, Rosenqvist, an ascendent Lundgaard and McLaughlin behind him. The race was no longer a battle of tire strategy, but one of fuel. With two pit stops out of the way by lap 30 for most of the field, drivers had to make it another 60 laps on only one further stop.
Newgarden aimed to kick off the final round of pit stops from just outside the top five, but ran into difficulties — his seatbelt began to come undone, forcing him to come in a second time and effectively end his race.
On lap 63, Palou pulled the trigger, jumping into the pits for the final time of the day. He was only half a second behind Kirkwood in the lead, but Kirkwood found traffic as he made one final lap before pitting. Palou found clean air.
It didn’t matter.
Tire warm-up meant Palou didn’t manage to outpace Kirkwood. When the Andretti driver had to warm his own new tires, Palou couldn’t find a move. The biggest threat to Kirkwood’s chances was no more.
“I just caught the traffic in the very last corner, it was actually ideal timing. It didn’t hold me up whatsoever,” Kirkwood said. “We just had a little bit of a hiccup in pit lane, which brought us back to him.”
From there, Palou simply couldn’t keep up. Over the next 27 laps, Kirkwood built a lead of over four seconds. It was another 16-second gap back to Lundgaard in third.
“We didn’t really have that ultimate speed that the 27 car had,” Palou said. “Every time I had a small chance, he had a little bit more pace.”
The win cuts into Palou’s still large championship lead, with Kirkwood now second in the championship and 34 points behind the Spaniard.
“Andretti was a title contender last year, with [Herta] coming on strong at the end of the season,” Kirkwood said. “We want to make that evident throughout the season. We don’t want it to just be right at the end, where we’re clawing back at people. We want to be right there in the fight the entire time, if not leading.”
Neither Southern California race this season has gone yellow at any point. Both Lundgaard and Palou attributed this to the hybrid engine introduced midway through last season, but they did so in very different manners.
“The hybrid weight makes it difficult to be close,” Lundgaard said.
Palou was more positive.
“Now we can start a car,” Palou said. “Before, as soon as you would see a car out and parked, you would have to throw the yellow. Now you can wait a little bit.”
It remains to be seen if that caution-free streak will continue when IndyCar returns May 4 at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama, where anything, even a mannequin falling from a bridge, can happen.