2nd-year driver gets 1st IndyCar win in Long Beach Grand Prix

Pole-sitter Kyle Kirkwood won the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach Sunday, finishing 0.9907 of a second ahead of Andretti Autosport teammate Romain Grosjean for the first victory in his 20-race NTT IndyCar Series career.

Kirkwood regained the lead on the 56th lap of the 85-lap race on the 1.968-mile, 11-turn street circuit surrounding the Long Beach Convention Center when Spaniard Alex Palou was making a pit stop.

Grosjean was about one second behind Kirkwood over the final 30 laps but had to conserve fuel because he made his final pit stop one lap earlier than Kirkwood and wasn’t able to expend the additional fuel needed to attempt a pass until the final lap.

“We tried everything we could on our end, but it was a fuel situation, so we couldn’t really attack,” said Grosjean, a Frenchman who was also second in last year’s Long Beach race, 1.2869 seconds behind American Josef Newgarden in a race that ended under a caution.

Sunday’s second-place finish was Grosjean’s fourth in his 33 IndyCar races over three years after driving on the Formula One circuit in 2009 and from 2012 through 2020. He has never won an IndyCar race.

Swede Marcus Ericsson, who won in St. Petersburg and the 2022 Indianapolis 500, was third, one spot ahead of Colton Herta, who was raised in Valencia and won the 2021 Long Beach race.

The victory “kind of shook the monkey off my back a little bit because we had a spell of bad luck there,” said Kirkwood, who completed the race in one hour, 43 minutes, 17.3748 seconds and had an average speed of 97.171 mph.

The 24-year-old from Jupiter, Florida, began the 2023 season with a 15th-place finish in the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg March 5, then was knocked out by a mechanical problem after 97 laps of the 250-lap PPG 375 at Texas Motor Speedway April 2, finishing 27th in a 28-car field.

“All of it was out of our control,” Kirkwood said. “At St. Pete, we were extremely fast, running in sixth. We got caught up in someone else’s incident.

“Texas we weren’t really that fast, but we got the car in a really good window, ultimately, we weren’t able to finish the race from a mechanical, which was super unfortunate. We had the pace.

“This weekend we had the pace and were able to execute. I think that was possible at the past two events. Hopefully this is now just creating some momentum that will carry through the rest of the season.”

Kirkwood’s best finish during his 2022 rookie season, when he drove for AJ Foyt Racing, was a 10th-place finish in Long Beach. He was 24th in the season standings, the second-lowest among full-time drivers.

“I got everything I needed out of last year,” said Kirkwood, who on Saturday won the first pole of his IndyCar career. “I learned a ton. I think this win tells it that I can go out, prove I’m fast, execute, do all the right things in the race.”

Team owner Michael Andretti called Kirkwood “the real deal.”

“We knew it a long time ago when he won the championship for us in the INDY NXT series,” Andretti said, referring to Kirkwood’s winning the championship of the developmental series in 2021. “We knew he was something special.”

Kirkwood led through the first 21 laps, then lost the lead to Newgarden on the 22nd lap during a pit stop under a caution when the right front tire of the PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda driven by Scott Dixon made contact with the left front tire of the Arrow McLaren Chevrolet driven by Pato O’Ward, causing Dixon’s car to strike the tire barrier in Turn 8 on the 20th lap.

With Newgarden in the pits, Argentine rookie Agustin Canapino took the lead in his Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet on the 23rd lap. Newgarden regained the lead on the 26th lap, keeping it until his pit stop on the 52nd lap when Kirkwood took the lead for two laps until his pit stop.

Palou finished fifth, Newgarden ninth and Canapino 25th in the 27-car field.

“To have my first win at Long Beach is something that’s incredible,” Kirkwood said. “I know I’m going to cherish this moment and this day for the rest of my life.”