On Sunday at the 2026 Grand Prix of Arlington, Kyle Kirkwood produced a masterclass to take his sixth victory in IndyCar. Five of them have now come on street tracks.
It also meant he was the inaugural winner of this race.
The winning move by Kyle Kirkwood in the 2026 Arlington IndyCar race
Starting P7 following a mistake in qualifying, Kirkwood worked his way through the field, passing championship favourite Alex Palou to take an outstanding victory and go top of the standings.
Asked post-race in a media session attended by Pit Debrief and other outlets about the pass on the Spaniard, the Andretti driver explained his daring move into turn 14.
He had been struggling to stay close to car #10 in the twisty and tight section in the early part of the lap as Palou was running more downforce. Ultimately, though, Kirkwood got the job done.
“Passed Palou, which is a very rare thing to say in a race.
“Yeah, it was kind of all or nothing. He was so good in the four, five, six, seven, eight, nine section, the tight, twisty bit. It was hard to get to his gearbox to make a pass on the straight.
“It put me in a position where we’re good on the straight, right now, trimmed more than him, good under braking, and I knew that he was going to brake a little bit later there because his car was bottoming more than ours.
“Yeah, just had to do a bit of a late lunge and surprise him a little bit because if he started defending there was probably no chance of us getting by him ’cause that was probably the only place we were going to be able to pass him.”
Kirkwood praises clean racer Palou
The best place to pass was the very, very long back straight down to turn 10. However, Kyle Kirkwood could never get quite close enough to the CGR driver out of turn 9 as Palou has generally built a gap of around a second before it. So, it required an element of surprise to make the move.
After managing to follow him closely through turn 12 on lap 54, he made a brilliant, daring move on the brakes into the tight turn 14.
As the driver of car #27 noted, the four-time IndyCar champion is an exceptionally clean racer and can be trusted to leave space in close wheel-to-wheel combat.
“I was close enough that time.
“Palou is a smart person, smart driver. And if he knew that I got that close to him on that lap, and then I waited for the next lap to attack him, he would have defended.
“We were in a dire straits situation. This is probably the only place I can pass him. This is the only time I can surprise him.
“There was some urgency, but at the same time we were a lot quicker than him. He’s someone that is very trustworthy to race against. If you do some of those late lunges, you can trust he’s not going to drive you into the wall, like maybe some other drivers will.
“I always love racing against him because we’re both very aware of our surroundings and race very, very cleanly together.”
Kyle Kirkwood was not always confident of catching the defending championship in 2026 IndyCar Arlington showdown
In the second stint on the reds for the main runners, Palou drove away from Ericsson, O’Ward, Kirkwood and Power. The eventual race winner was 10s behind as the second round of stops started.
However, the blacks would be the tyre of choice for the last two stints. Through practice, Kirkwood’s pace on them was extremely impressive. While Palou usually has more in the tank on race day versus Friday, it was not happening for him on Sunday.
On the blacks, Kirkwood was generally hauling him in at around 0.3-0.6s a lap. Eventually they met on track heading into lap 52, before the pass came two tours later.
“I wasn’t quite sure because I wasn’t catching Palou that much on the previous stint.
“As soon as we had a little hiccup on the last stop, I came out further behind him than I anticipated. We ran him down in two or three laps.
“I was like, ‘man, we have the pace to make it happen right now, I don’t know if we’re going to have the pace to make it happen in 10 laps’. That was part of some of the urgency.
“I wasn’t quite sure I had the confidence or not. Once I did the first few laps, it was showing that we had a lot of pace.”
Struggles on the softer tyre
In the first two stints, Kyle Kirkwood looked fast but only seemed to be a podium contender. When the blacks went on, however, the game completely changed.
In the third stint, he passed Pato O’Ward and Marcus Ericsson and left them in his dust. With Power on the fuel saving two-stop, he got him in the final pit sequence. Then P1 was his after nailing Palou.
“I’d have to say we didn’t really keep the tyres under us on the alternate tyres.
“We knew it wasn’t an alternate tyre race. We knew it was a prime tyre race. Once we got to the primes, we knew the level of aggression that we had, you can say, played in our favor.
“A little bit of strategy. A little bit of a chess match there with downforce. A lot of guys, some were hole five with the wicker, some guys were all the way down to hole four which is hundreds of pounds of drag. It’s a big loss in downforce.
“You’re right, we definitely have more deg on the alternate tyre. But the prime tyre just felt bulletproof. We felt that all through practice and through the warm-up, too. I think guys recognised that.”
Superb street course form
In recent years Andretti have been right amongst the best on street tracks. Pole positions and strong grid positions have been a regular occurrence. Nonetheless, it has not always translated into race pace and P1s. Chip Ganassi Racing, with Alex Palou in particular, have been stronger on Sunday’s.
However, the IndyCar Arlington race showed Andretti to have the fastest race car as Kyle Kirkwood won, with Will Power and Marcus Ericsson backing him up in P3 and P4.
The 27-year-old was quick to praise his team for their efforts.
“I mean, it’s a statement on how good we are on street courses, right? We’re able to do this at a few street courses.
“It’s incredible to see that we’re able to do it at another one. We’re adding street courses to our calendar.
“A lot of it’s due to this guy [Dan Towriss], the engineers, and the group that he’s been able to rally together to give us this performance, right? It’s not just me out there driving one of these cars.
“It’s all the hard work that goes into one of these street courses is why we have the performance we have. It’s the reason why we had the pole, finished 1, 3 and 4. Palou is always there (smiling).”
Following round 3, Kyle Kirkwood leads Alex Palou by 26 points in the standings.
