“Return of the King.”
First of all, a small apology. This took longer than it should have done to write, only because I’ve been swamped with the actual day job. For those who are newer here or stumbling on this page randomly, I’m essentially the Podcast producer for the Motorsport Network (Including Autosport). While I’m immensely proud we’ve got something resembling a huge network of shows now that covers so much of the global Motorsport landscape, sometimes you get a little overwhelmed when you’re producing for seven different channels, while presenting one yourself (Hey Tank Slappers fans!)
Hopefully this won’t happen too much, and if it does, I’ll let you know on Bluesky or Instagram. DreHarrison on the former, DreHarrison101 on the latter.
Anyway, IndyCar had its third race of the season and one of its blue ribbon events for the year, the Grand Prix of Long Beach. And with it, a familiar face returned to the winner’s circle as Kirk Kirkwood became the first man this season to defeat Alex Palou. Let’s get into it.
Much Ado About Kirkwood, 2
Talking about Kyle Kirkwood in IndyCar has been an interesting experience. If you’re familiar with the lore and history of our show, the wonderful Ryan Erik King had a full-blown Powerpoint presentation about why he was going to be so special, and how he was the greatest Road to Indy graduate of all, winning everything on the way into the series.
Since making it to the big leagues, he struggled his rookie season a bit, overdriving the worst of the modern AJ Foyt era cars, who themselves were in financial turmoil with three cars, ROKIT money that never came, and resources spread thin. He immediately went to Andretti and proved that he never needed easing in to begin with, he was as good as their other drivers on sight. He won his third start with the team in 2023, holding off the far more experienced Romain Grosjean to do it. One of two wins that year, the other beating Scott McLaughlin straight up around the streets of Nashville. 11th overall that season, 7th overall last year, losing some of the peak by going winless in 2024, but was far more consistent, scoring 13 Top 10’s – Only Alex Palou could match that.
I say all this to day, Kirkwood’s gotten better and better as his time in IndyCar has progressed. And this felt like a graduation. Take on the best driver in IndyCar and beat him at his own game. In qualifying, he shocked everyone by beating teammate Colton Herta, IndyCar’s qualifying ace, by a quarter of a second, and putting nearly half a second on Palou in third. And down the stretch, it was Kirkwood who dictated the terms of engagement, so often the way of winning at Long Beach.
In a race that was dominated by the harder primary tyre, twice did Palou try the undercut to beat Kirkwood out of the pits, with passing on equal pace nearly impossible on the narrow street track. That tyre warm-up phase out of the pits was worth a couple of seconds easily, and that’s where so many of the passes came from. On that final outlap, Kirkwood survived a Palou onslaughted, and just as his tyres were activating, he nailed the exit at the final hairpin and held off the Spaniard. After that, he was in full control and even pushed the win out to nearly five seconds. The alternate strategy runners were never in the fight. Kirkwood had done what no-one has done in 2025, beat Palou at his own game.
And just like it, he’s become the top contender in the series. Amazingly, five drivers have refused to leave the Top 10 after three races. But with winning carrying a minimum 7-point swing (After bonus points), Kirkwood’s now second overall, reducing Palou’s title advantage to 34 points, and has gone fifth, eighth and winning at Long Beach. Seriously, what is it with Andretti and street circuit strength? Remember, they went 1-2-4 here in 2023!
Kirkwood is here. He was my dark horse for the Astor Cup for a reason. The only question, can he turn this into a 4-5 win season and really give the reigning Champion a headache? Because somewhere, I think Alex Palou will gladly take second here.
FOX And (A Lack Of) Friends
I try my best to avoid an old dirty habit from my Wrestling writing days and reading too much into TV ratings, because sometimes they don’t tell the full picture. But it’s hard to ignore that the number on TV Tuesday via Nielsen wasn’t good.
Now before I go hard into this, it’s worth noting that over 200,000 showed up across the weekend. That’s awesome, and the combined weight of the IMSA field being there makes Long Beach a genuinely great fan experience, a record breaking attendance for the track.
A shame that only 550,000 watched on TV. Now, there’s always a few contributing factors. This was a West Coast IndyCar race that directly clashed with NASCAR’s race at Bristol (Which was apparently a total Larson borefest, which likely didn’t help either.) There was also the small matter of the final round of The Masters going on at the same time, and the biggest story possible – Rory McIlroy winning his first major in 11 years and becoming just the sixth golfer in history to complete the Career Grand Slam. The Masters peaked at 13m viewers when McIlroy and Justin Rose had their playoff.
While there’s some genuine mitigation here, remember, IndyCar had no problem jumping up and down over its Fox debut, where 1.4 million viewers watched, the most for a season opener since 2014. Thermal, it went down to 700k, and we’re now at 550. While it’s better than last year’s 300k, it says that only the hardcores made the effort here. For your biggest non-500 race of the year. Where did all those new viewers go? I fear they haven’t stuck around.
I think there are two big reasons why. First up, the season hasn’t been great so far. St. Pete was relatively tame as a race, and Thermal’s broadcast literally went missing. Easy push factors to make you not wanna keep watching. Then the simple fact that the calendar isn’t conducive towards keeping new viewers. The season is heavily compressed towards the backend so it finishes in August, just before the start of NFL season. That’s a smart move and I’m all for it, but the season started in the first week of March, it’s now the middle of April and we’ve had three races. IndyCar has to find a way to reduce the dead time of three week breaks at the start of the season, it’s a complete momentum killer. That will rectify itself once we get to Barber and the Month of May, but that can sell itself.
FOX earned a lot of good will with its first set of TV adverts and crossover content with its other sports programmes, but it’s already reusing material to try and resuscitate interest. They need to get their thinking caps on and figure out how to keep viewers around from the races that’ll be guaranteed hits. See you in June.
The Lightning Round
Bobby Wickens, you’re a hero my friend. So proud of you.
Seriously, what the heck is going on with Team Penske? Everything that could be going wrong, is. Scott McLaughlin’s not been able to hit his best form yet, Will Power, the greatest one-lap specialist in North American Motorsport history, hasn’t made it to Round 2 of qualifying yet, and Josef Newgarden suffered Penske’s second broken seatbelt harness since the last four rounds, losing 2 laps and finishing 27th. Their drivers sit eighth, ninth and tenth in the standings, but more importantly – 73, 79 and 84 points behind Alex Palou. Giving him that kind of headstart could be catastrophic.
Christian Lundgaard is at it again. Making alternate strategies work out and back-to-back third place finishes. He sits third in the standings, 46 points off the top, but worth noting – 16 points ahead of Pato O’Ward. Has McLaren finally got their depth piece, or is this more down to their star driver having two mediocre races to start the year?
Scott Dixon couldn’t make fuel or tire saves work at Long Beach… Is this the beginning of the end?
Fourth in the standings with back-to-back Top 5’s… Felix Rosenqvist? Meyer Shank’s found some race pace. Everyone look out…
Sting Ray Robb and Kyffin Simpson rode the wave of the alternate strat to ninth and tenth, the latter’s best ever IndyCar finish. This was a weird race.
Is there anyone Devlin DeFrancesco hasn’t beefed with yet?
And what is it with the green recycled alternate tyre being total cheeks? Newgarden pitting on Lap 2 to get rid of his summed everything up. It felt like watching an F1 race from around 2013 where the softest tyre was essentially a qualifier and nothing else. A mess. Not necessary.
The Verdict: 5/10 (Meh) – You probably got a hint on this when you were reading earlier… you weren’t treating this like an IGN review where you just scroll for the score, right? Anywho, this race was mid. Kirkwood/Palou was mildly intriguing, but Long Beach is always going to be a tricky one unless you have a huge P2P advantage. Weird how the hybrid’s have barely been mentioned this season either. It’s not made the racing any better to be honest. And don’t get me started on IMSA. Phew. See you in Barber.
And finally, let me speak on behalf of everyone here at Motorsport101 – Trans men are men, trans women are women, and Motorsport101 will always be a safe space for all you, because that’s what we believe Motorsport and beyond, should be. 🏳️⚧️
