Yahoo Autos Kyle Kirkwood Grabs First IndyCar Win at Long Beach
Kyle Kirkwood won 62% of his 50 IndyCar junior series races as he won championships in Indy Lights, Indy Pro 2000, and U.S. F2000. That resume made him the runaway favorite for rookie of the year heading into 2022, but Kirkwood secured just one top ten in his lone season at AJ Foyt Racing and came to his expected ride in the No. 27 Andretti Autosport car this year with much lower expectations. Those have already been surpassed.
Kirkwood took pole yesterday, but he lost the lead to Penske's Josef Newgarden early and spent the entire second stint behind the two-time series champion on an alternate tire strategy. Newgarden was able to hold off Kirkwood on the softer tire, but he stopped one lap earlier and was forced to spend his final run on the hard tire chasing a fuel number. Newgarden fell to ninth after being passed on an overcut during the final stop, while Kirkwood was able to hold off teammate Romain Grosjean over the entire final stint to take his first career win.
A fourth-place finish for Colton Herta made a 1-2-4 for Andretti Autosport, a championship-winning team that struggled to field competitive cars for Herta and then-teammate Alexander Rossi throughout a 2022 season that saw each win just once. Grosjean, who joined the team ahead of the 2022 season, secured just one podium in 2022; he has already been involved in the fight for the win in three races in 2023, although he crashed out of the races at both St. Petersburg and Texas Motor Speedway.
Marcus Ericsson, Alex Palou, and Will Power secured good finishes for their championship hopes in third, fifth, and sixth, while Newgarden and teammate Scott McLaughlin fell to ninth and 10th on the same alternate tire strategy. Pato O'Ward, who led the championship through two races after finishing second in both, finished 17th after spinning on the day's second restart. Scott Dixon, who was involved in a crash with O'Ward earlier in the race, would retire with a mechanical issue.
IndyCar returns to competition with a race at Barber Motorsports Park in two weeks. After two street circuits and an intermediate oval, that will be the year's first natural-terrain road course race.
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