DETROIT — With 22 laps to go, Kyle Kirkwood sat second with a damaged front wing. He made contact with Kyffin Simpson the lap prior. The race lead, however, was within his grasp. He had the pace and just needed to play his cards right.
“I had to overtake kind of everyone in different manners,” he said. “It was all in the same place, but it all felt a little bit different in a way.
“Yeah, the Armstrong pass I actually popped early on him to kind of put him in a spot that he couldn’t defend, and it worked out really well. I went around the outside of David. We were one of the most trimmed cars out there, which did happen in that situation here today. I think David was max downforce and we were trimmed a little bit, and it made it a little bit easier for us to pass. I don’t know where Santino was on downforce, but he was also easy to get around in the straight and then kind of get back in front of him and defend going down into Turn 3.
“Pretty simple passes, if I’m being honest, in street course form. Not much of a lunge. I had a lot of big lunges early on in the race because I was pretty upset that I lost positions in the start. But they all worked out.”
Coming down the backstretch on Jefferson Avenue, the driver of the No. 27 Andretti Global Honda overtook Santino Ferrucci for the race lead and drove onto victory.
“Massive,” he said. “I mean, huge day in general for Andretti Global and the 27 car. We’ve had a hell of a couple weeks, I’m not going to lie, and this is an exclamation point on everything that we’ve done. Andretti is phenomenal at street courses and it’s so good to capitalize on it. I felt pretty robbed of a couple wins here the past couple years where I felt like we definitely should have won and we had pace on everyone, and finally this year we were able to get it done, not from lack of challenge, either. I had to pass some cars out there. I found myself in the fourth, fifth position, I think, a couple times and had to claw my way back, so fortunately we had pace to do so, and fortunately I made it stick. It was some low-percentage moves, I’m not going to lie, that I made. But you have to at street courses.
“Any move you make is low percentage, so fortunately they stuck, and we were able to come home with the win.”
It’s his fourth career victory in 58 NTT IndyCar Series races and second of the 2025 season.
Ferrucci scored his career-best IndyCar finish with a runner-up and pole sitter Colton Herta rounded out the podium.
“It feels great,” Ferrucci said. “Honestly, the strategy plays into everything that we do, especially at road and street courses it’s very tough, and I can’t thank the team enough. This is more deserving of them than it is even of me. We probably drove to 11th minus the strategy just running our race.
“Mike and Adam, C.J., they all made great calls on the stand to pit us when they did and got lucky with the yellow when it came out, cycled us to the front action. I had no idea I was the leader because there was cars going around the pace car in front of me, and then they stopped me, and I was like, oh, well, this is a pleasant surprise. So it was pretty cool.
“But yeah, no, I just couldn’t hold off Kyle in the end. I don’t know what I did with the tires, but I couldn’t hold off Will, and I definitely didn’t think I was going to hold off Colton. The red flag really saved us. Just happy that Felix is okay after that one. Yeah, was able to get back around Will (Power) and come home second.”
“Yeah, really the whole race. Yeah, very difficult track,” Herta said. “Very difficult to get everything right today.
“I think we ended up choosing the right strategy, and I was happy with how we did everything with the tires. Yeah, our Gainbridge Honda was fast, and yeah, wish we could get two more positions, but maybe in two weeks.”
Power and Simpson rounded out the top-five
Marcus Armstrong, Pato O’Ward, Christian Lundgaard, Josef Newgarden and Alexander Rossi rounded out the top-10.
Race summary
Herta led the field to green at 12:53 p.m. ET. Lundgaard outbraked him into Turn 3 for the race lead, but Herta took it back to lead the first lap.
Lundgaard pit from third on Lap 10 for Firestone blacks. Kirkwood pit from second for Firestone blacks on Lap 11. Herta pit from the lead on Lap 12. A caution interrupted the green flag cycle of stops when Felix Rosenqvist rear-ended the tire barrier in Turn 8 on Lap 14. During the caution, Scott McLaughlin pit from the lead. This handed control of the race to Christian Rasmussen.
Back to green on Lap 18, caution flew again on Lap 19 when Devlin DeFrancesco lost his right-rear tire.
Back to green on Lap 23, Graham Rahal went to Rasmussen’s outside into Turn 3, but couldn’t complete the overtake. Rahal pit from second on Lap 32, and it was a long stop to tighten a loose wheel nut. Rasmussen pit from the lead on Lap 36. Louis Foster pit from the lead on Lap 37. Scott Dixon pit from the lead on Lap 39. Kirkwood pit from the lead on Lap 50. O’Ward pit from the lead on Lap 53. Rosenqvist pit from the lead on Lap 55, and the lead cycled back to Kirkwood.
Caution flew on Lap 67 when Callum Ilott slammed the tire barrier and wall in Turn 1. Ferrucci, who pitted just before the caution, stayed out to take the lead with 30 laps to go.
Back to green with 28 laps to go, caution flew when David Malukas hit championship leader and Indianapolis 500 winner Alex Palou and put him into the Turn 1 tire barrier. Malukas served a drive-through penalty for avoidable contact.
Kyle Kirkwood’s winning move
Back to green with 24 laps to go, Kirkwood made contact with Simpson and damaged his front wing while overtaking him for second with 23 to go. Nevertheless, with 22 to go, he powered around Ferrucci down the backstretch for the race lead.
Caution flew with 17 laps to go when Foster suffered a suspension failure, clipped the outside wall on the backstretch, plowed into the back of Rosenqvist and sent both of them into the Turn 3 tire barrier. This brought out the red flag with 13 to go.
Kyle Kirkwood drives to victory
Back to green with 11 to go, Kirkwood drove onto victory.
What else happened
On the Lap 18 restart, McLaughlin tagged the back of Nolan Siegel and sent him spinning on the pit straight. McLaughlin received a drive-through penalty for avoidable contact.
Nuts and bolts
The race lasted two hours and 20 seconds, at an average speed of 82.022 mph. There were 11 lead changes among 10 different drivers and five cautions for 19 laps.
Palou leaves Detroit with a 90-point lead over O’Ward.
The NTT INDYCAR Series returns to action on June 15 in the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.
