Kyle Kirkwood wins his second race of the season in Nashville

The NTT IndyCar Series held its final street course race of the season on Sunday afternoon in Nashville, Tennessee, in the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix. Chip Ganassi driver Scott Dixon made history by tying Tony Kannan for the most consecutive starts in IndyCar history.

Team Penske driver Scott McLaughlin started the race on the pole with Arrow McLaren driver Pato O’Ward joining him on the front row. Scott Dixon was the defending winner of this race and he started in ninth place.

Before the race started, Will Power’s car would not start when the field started to roll for warmup laps. Luckily, his crew were able to get him fired up and he caught up to the field. Power started seventh in the race.

After a false start, the race got underway on the second lap. On the third lap, Christian Lundgaard passed Josef Newgarden for ninth place. Ahead of them, Alex Palou passed David Malukas for fourth place on the seventh lap.

David Malukas’s problems got worse on lap 13 when his gearbox broke and the rear wing was dislodged heading into Turn 9 which brought out the first caution. The race restarted two laps later. Scott McLaughlin led the opening 24 laps before making his first pit stop.

Romain Grosjean, Kyle Kirkwood, Marcus Ericsson, and Alex Palou all lead several laps. Kirkwood’s pit crew were fast to get him out and he was in second place behind Alex Palou. Palou led 12 laps before pitting on lap 45, handing the lead over to Kyle Kirkwood.

There was an interesting battle behind the leaders on lap 50, Rinus VeeKay tried to pass Alexander Rossi heading into Turn 9 for fourth place. The two initially made contact before VeeKay went off the course while Rossi nearly hit him. This allowed Power to pass both drivers to take the fourth position. VeeKay served a drive-through penalty for avoidable contact.

While Kirkwood made his pit stop on lap 51, Scott McLaughlin, Romain Grosjean, and Will Power all took turns leading a lap before Kirkwood resumed the lead. Kirkwood’s car was fast and his pit crew made fast pit stops allowing him to keep the lead for the rest of the race.

However, it did not come easy. On lap 71, Linus Lundqvist crashed at Turn 11 which brought out the second caution with nine laps to go. The race restarted on lap 74 but a lap later, there was a jam in the back of the field at Turn 11 which resulted in a three-car pileup between Benjamin Pederson, Felix Rosenqvist, and Agustin Canapino to bring out the third caution. Colton Herta also clipped the wall at Turn 11, he did not have a great race.

The race resumed with four laps to go. Kyle Kirkwood got a great jump on the restart and drove away to his second win of the season over Scott McLaughlin by .7633 seconds. Kirkwood started eighth in this race and led 34 of 80 laps.

The rest of the top ten finishers were Alex Palou third, Josef Newgarden fourth, Scott Dixon fifth, Romain Grosjean sixth, Marcus Ericsson seventh, Pato O’Ward eighth, Christian Lundgaard ninth, and Will Power tenth.

“I’ve got to give up to the 27 crew, AutoNation, Andretti, Honda,” said Kyle Kirkwood. “They played everything in my favor, to be honest. They gave me all the tools I needed. They cycled me to the front on strategy, and we just made really smart decisions and hit all of our marks. Just a solid day for the 27 crew.”

“I gave it my all. I tried my hardest. Congrats to Kyle and his team. Another top-three, good points. Bummed we didn’t get the win, but we weren’t the best on the day. Kyle was,” said Scott McLaughlin. “Hopefully next year we’re running for the championship and win here and win the championship, as well. There will be a huge party on Broadway.”

“We had the speed. It was improbable after the call we did on that first yellow. Honestly, we talked about it before the race,” said Alex Palou. “We expected more yellows, and it was not the right call. But hey, we survived, we made it work. It was a tough race, but we made the podium and couldn’t be happier now.”

There are now four races left of the 2023 season. The NTT IndyCar Series heads to Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course next Saturday at 2 pm on USA Network. Subscribe to Fubo to watch all of the 2023 NTT IndyCar Series season. Purchase tickets for all IndyCar races today on StubHub and Viagogo.

Finishing Order: