Kyle Kirkwood Earns a Dominant Milestone Win at Long Beach
Long Beach, CA – Kyle Kirkwood earned Pole Position the day before, ahead of his Andretti Global teammate, Colton Herta, and held off the season-dominant Alex Palou to get his first win of the 2025 season at the 50th Running of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. This was Andretti’s ninth win on the streets of Long Beach
For Kirkwood, this is his second win at Long Beach, and the third of his career. This is his first win since the streets of Nashville in 2023 after going winless in the 2024 season. Kirkwood also won from Pole Position back when he won the 2023 edition of Long Beach for his first career win.
Kirkwood spoke with IndyCar Radio’s Jonathan Grace in Victory Lane. “Yeah, I mean absolutely huge weekend for the #27 Honda crew. I mean PreFab came onto the car this weekend, and they’re a local business, and they absolutely crushed it this weekend, and we’re so glad with this performance right. I mean, 50th Grand Prix here at Long Beach, and we’re able to win it. Second one here for me, flawless qualifying, flawless race, absolutely great pit stops, absolutely great strategy, and we absolutely nailed it. So, hats off to the entire crew here standing behind me. I mean it was absolutely massive.”
Grace asked Kirkwood how much his Andretti Global crew support means to him, “That is exactly correct. Here in IndyCar, you need everything to click, and that’s what we had here today. We had the pace, we had the strategy, we had the pit stops, and we had the track position, and it’s a group effort here. It’s not only just me driving this car, it’s the whole group behind me standing right here, and a lot of development that goes into a win like this. So, this is absolutely massive. I want to thank the fans for sticking around. I know that probably looked a little bit boring, but it was the best seat for me! So, thank you guys, it was a great weekend, I hope you guys enjoyed, awesome race yesterday, awesome race today, and we’re coming out of here with a win, so it’s awesome for the PreFab Honda and Andretti Global.”
Finally, Kirkwood was asked what it was like to pull away from Palou, “Yeah, you know what, I don’t think the traffic wanted to help me in the beginning of the race, but they ended up helping me at the end of the race. I had to do some maneuvering to get by a couple of the cars, but he had to do the same at the end of the race, which ended up hurting him. So, I was fortunate for that, it took a little bit of pressure off me at the end, but man, every single time we came out of a pit stop, he was coming. That was really hard keeping him at bay, but we got it done, we stayed out front, it was a track position race, and man hats off to these guys over here. I mean they’re the ones that allowed this to happen, so thank you so much!”
Only six of the 27 cars elected to start on the primary black-wall Firestone tires, while everyone else started on the alternate green-wall tires. Christian Lundgaard, Scott Dixon, Kyffin Simpson, Sting Ray Robb, Robert Shwartzman, and Santino Ferrucci were among the ones on the primary tires.
Two laps into the race, Josef Newgarden pitted to ditch the alternate tires to switch to the primaries, causing a chain reaction of other drivers pitting a couple of laps later to ditch theirs as well, such as Scott McLaughlin and Colton Herta early on, then were later followed by Kirkwood and Palou.
Lundgaard, Dixon, and Simpson all stayed out longer on the alternate strategy to make their primary tires last, while Kirkwood, Palou, and Felix Rosenqvist played their cards normally.
The race ran caution-free once again. Newgarden had the only issues towards the conclusion of the race as his seatbelts came undone and came into the pits numerous times to get them fixed.
Palou finished second after trying to outduel Kirkwood in the pits but came a little over 2.5 seconds behind Kirkwood. Palou remains three-for-three on the podium, while this second-place finish is his worst of the season. Lundgaard earns back-to-back third-place finishes to round out the podium after outdueling Rosenqvist in the closing laps.
Lundgaard rallied from starting in 12th and finishing on the podium after crashing his #7 Velo Arrow McLaren Chevrolet yesterday in qualifying. Rosenqvist scored his career-best finish at Long Beach with fourth, while two-time Long Beach winner, Will Power, overcame a horrendous non-Team Penske-esque qualifying yesterday from starting 13th to round out the top five.
McLaughlin, Herta, Dixon, Robb, and Simpson completed the top ten. It was a stellar day for Robb and Simpson, Robb tied his career-best 9th place finish, while Simpson also finished a career-high 10th. Ferrucci was the biggest mover of the race in 11th after starting last from going off in qualifying yesterday, followed by Marcus Ericsson, Pato O’Ward, Marcus Armstrong, and Alexander Rossi, completing the top 15.
Louis Foster was the highest-finishing rookie in 16th, followed by David Malukas, Shwartzman, Rinus VeeKay, and Nolan Siegel, rounding out the top 20. Siegel had a standout moment in the weekend, after topping the timing charts in second practice, only to struggle in the race as he dealt with food poisoning.
To round out the field, it was Callum Ilott, Graham Rahal, Christian Rasmussen, Devlin DeFrancesco, Conor Daly, Jacob Abel, and Newgarden.
Palou continues to hold a strong 34-point advantage over Kirkwood as the series heads to Barber Motorsports Park for the Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix, their fourth round of the 2025 season, with green flag scheduled for 1:30 PM on May 4th.
