By Matt Crider, Staff Writer<\/p>\n
ARLINGTON, Texas \u2014 New street course, familiar result for Kyle Kirkwood.<\/p>\n
Kirkwood passed four-time and defending NTT IndyCar Series champion Alex Palou with just over 15 laps remaining Sunday and hung on to win the inaugural Java House Grand Prix of Arlington. Kirkwood\u2019s sixth career win was his fifth on a street course.<\/p>\n
Kirkwood sent the No. 27 Andretti Global Honda to the inside of Palou\u2019s Chip Ganassi Racing entry in the 14th and final turn of the 2.73-mile circuit, then pulled ahead as they raced down the start\/finish straightway that ran parallel to Johnson Creek and between AT&T Stadium and Globe Life Field.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew that he was going to brake a little bit later there because his car was bottoming [out] more than ours,\u201d Kirkwood said. \u201cPalou is a very 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. So we were in a dire straits situation. I was like, this is probably the only place I can pass him and this is the only time I can surprise him.\u201d<\/p>\n
With four laps to go, Christian Rasmussen crashed into the wall to bring out the first caution flag. The race resumed with one lap remaining, and Kirkwood was unchallenged during a brief green-flag stint that ended when Nolan Siegel and Romain Grosjean crashed entering Turn 14.<\/p>\n
Kirkwood took the checkered flag under caution ahead of Palou\u2019s No. 10 Honda, with teammates Will Power and pole winner Marcus Ericsson following to put all three Andretti cars in the top four.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast week we had a shot at the win or at least a podium, so it\u2019s very nice to get one today,\u201d Power said. \u201cVery happy with the new team \u2014 very, very strong. They\u2019re still improving a lot, too. I think this will be the team to beat \u2014 this year actually. I was saying three years it would take us to get everything, but I\u2019m going to say this year. You\u2019re going to have a bit of work for yourself [Palou]. It\u2019s good stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
McLaren\u2019s Pato O\u2019Ward finished fifth, followed by Penske\u2019s David Malukas, Christian Lundgaard of McLaren and Scott Dixon of Ganassi. O\u2019Ward, Malukas and Lundgaard were the highest-finishing Chevrolet drivers.<\/p>\n
Kirkwood, Palou and Power each led 16 laps, and Ericsson led the first 15. Palou passed Ericsson for the lead with a quicker stop on Arlington\u2019s unique double-sided pit lane. The two leaders pitted at the same time, one on either side of pit road.<\/p>\n
There were a few minor incidents that didn\u2019t warrant a caution period. Josef Newgarden, last week\u2019s winner at Phoenix Raceway, spun after bumping teammate Malukas leaving the pits, and rookie Mick Schumacher later bounced off Newgarden in similar fashion.<\/p>\n
Power went wide in Turn 10 by the Ballpark in Arlington, allowing Malukas to pass, but it had no effect on the outcome because Power was on a two-stop strategy as opposed to the prevailing three-stop tactic. Dixon and Marcus Armstrong (10th) were the only drivers in the top 10 to make four stops.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t have kept these guys behind me with the fuel that I had to save,\u201d Power said, referring to Kirkwood and Palou. \u201cWe kind of committed to the two-stopper, so that was a big fuel save. First two stints were big tire saves, but the pace was not bad. It just wasn\u2019t the quickest strategy today, but it showed that we can really look after tires if we have to and we can get big fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirkwood recorded the fastest backstretch speed along Randol Mill Road when he was clocked at 193.840 on Lap 36 of the 70-lap race.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe track was built properly, with the fencing, the walls, the branding. It looked good, it looked clean \u2014 exactly how a premier motorsports race should look like at a street course,\u201d Kirkwood said. \u201cI could see this being one of our marquee events outside of the [Indianapolis] 500 in a very short period of time if we continue coming back here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials announced Sunday that grandstand tickets for the race sold out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a new standard. Every stand was full, like, when you\u2019re driving around,\u201d Power said. \u201cIt was totally, totally full. The track looked amazing. It just looked like a big event. This is setting a new standard of what our events should look like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palou said drivers had been looking forward to racing on a long street course.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a 10 out of 10. There\u2019s nothing you can say that was bad. The attendance was incredible,\u201d Palou said. \u201cThis is by far the best street course race I\u2019ve been a part of. It\u2019s really fun to see so many people on the stands. The energy was incredible. I cannot wait to be back here next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirkwood won twice in 2023 and three times last year. He\u2019s won on the streets twice at Long Beach and once at Nashville and Detroit. Last season he added an oval victory at Gateway in Madison, Ill.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re good at street courses; we\u2019ve figured out short ovals now,\u201d Kirkwood said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to a road course next. I think that\u2019s where we need to thrive as well. There\u2019s a lot of work to do. Of course we want to be the biggest threat \u2014 every driver does. We\u2019re currently the biggest threat to [Palou] and the entire rest of the field, but we need to continue that because we\u2019ve got a lot of races to go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Matt Crider, Staff Writer ARLINGTON, Texas \u2014 New street course, familiar result for Kyle Kirkwood. Kirkwood passed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151],"class_list":["post-206077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}