WASHINGTON — Kyle Kirkwood gave the Freedom 250 an American winner, racing to his second victory of the IndyCar season on the streets of downtown Washington in a dominant performance Sunday.
In a race set up as part of the country’s 250th birthday celebration, President Donald Trump gave drivers the green flag at the start and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser served as grand marshal. Kirkwood crossed the finish line in front of the U.S. Capitol 3.09 seconds ahead of Christian Lundgaard, after leading for 128 of a possible 147 laps.
Will Power and Marcus Ericsson, Kirkwood’s teammates with Andretti Global, finished third and fourth.
Pole winner Álex Palou, who had a chance to clinch the series title, finished 20th in his second-worst showing of the year.
After Trump’s green flag, the field quickly went under caution because of debris in Turn 4. The first big wreck came when David Malukas went into the wall and Sting Ray Robb could do little to avoid crashing into him coming around a turn. Just like that, two of the race’s eight American drivers were out.
Several cars went onto pit road, and that’s when the day started to fall apart for Palou. He appeared to hit a tire in someone else’s area while exiting, and he was assessed a drive-through penalty.
Later, on another pit stop, one of Palou’s tires was loose when he started driving. That caused another delay, and he ended up off the lead lap. Palou later spun coming through a turn. His lead in the standings dropped from 133 points over second-place Kirkwood to 91 with three races to go.
Kirkwood had a commanding lead before Palou’s spin caused a caution. On a restart with 19 laps remaining, Scott McLaughlin tried to pass Kirkwood and went into a tire barrier. Then Kirkwood pulled off a strong restart with 13 laps to go and Lundgaard didn’t mount much of a threat as the 250-mile race wound down.
Marcus Armstrong was penalized for avoidable contact when he sent Christian Rasmussen into a spin. Rinus VeeKay went into the wall during that incident but appeared unaware of Armstrong’s culpability when he went on TV for an interview.
“If Rasmussen’s around, you know you’re going to crash. Either he does or you do,” VeeKay said. “It sucks. It’s stupid. It’s a long race, and some people seemingly don’t know that.”
