The walls surrounding a 1.968-mile street course in the downtown area of Long Beach, California are coming down. The streets are full of parked cars again and the multitude of homeless camps, uprooted by the city to blind visitors to the city’s reality have returned to their usual haunts.
The 50th anniversary of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, a 90-lap scurry around the 11 corners that make up the track for this longest-lived street course in the United States has seen victory go, for a second time, to Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood, who won here in 2023, his first victory in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, driving a Honda-powered Dallara from pole position.
Kirkwood, who won races and championships in his climb up the open-wheel ladder to INDYCAR, is one of those drivers that comes along every so often: successful in lower formulae and able to transfer that success to the top rung of the ladder. That’s not always the case, as some successful undercard racers have issues they just can’t overcome in bigger, more powerful formulae.
Not so Jupiter, Florida’s Kirkwood who used his Saturday pole position to drive a savvy race on the Long Beach streets, only ceding the top spot during pit stop exchanges. He did the same two years ago, and this time was followed to the checkered flags by reigning titleholder Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing, who won the first two contests in this 17-race season, also with Honda power. Christian Lundgaard, driving for Arrow McLaren, was the first Chevrolet to take the checkered flags Sunday afternoon, completing the race podium after passing Rosenqvist with five laps left to run. Lundgaard led 26 laps, second only to Kirkwood.
Starting from pole position on a tricky street course, one lined by walls – and, in this case by thousands of race fans – is always an advantage, but drivers and their teams have to take advantage of pit stops, the change from regular Firestone tires and the Guayule alternate green rubber that doesn’t last very long but gives overtaking opportunities, and latent race savvy are the tools needed to gain entry to Victory Lane.
One almost knew this would be a Honda win in Acura’s race. Not only did Kirkwood earn pole position, but the first five drivers gridded early Sunday afternoon all had Honda affiliations. Kirkwood led the field to green flags followed by his teammate Colton Herta, by Palou, Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist, and the third Andretti Global Dallara/Honda of Marcus Ericsson, the 2023 Indianapolis 500 winner.
Rosenqvist landed in fourth place, followed by two-time Long Beach victor Will Power from Team Penske (Chevrolet). Power’s Kiwi teammate Scott McLaughlin took sixth, with Herta seventh, last year’s winner Scott Dixon in eighth place for Ganassi, Juncos Hollinger’s Chevrolet-powered Sting Ray Robb coming from 19th to ninth and Ganassi’s Kyffin Simpson rounding out the top 10.
Notably, A.J. Foyt Racing’s Santino Ferrucci was the final driver to start and made up 16 places, from 27th grid slot to 11th at the checkered flags. There were 20 drivers completing all 90 tours of the Long Beach circuit, with four drivers one lap down and the final three combatants completing 88 of 90 laps. Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden, the two-time reigning Indianapolis 500 winner had a miserable afternoon, starting 15th and finishing 27th after seatbelt issues caused an unscheduled stop at midway during this contest.
This race, like the 49 that preceded it was held under mostly clear, sunny skies. It’s never rained on race day at Long Beach, but the usual late night, early morning clouds and haze continued almost until the green flags for this 90-lap contest. Incredibly, unlike most Long Beach – and other street courses – there were no caution periods during this race, for the first time in its INDYCAR history since 2016. There were also few lead changes – the series noted nine and these occurred during pit stop exchanges.
With Kirkwood leading just over half of the race distance, 46 of 90 laps, his domination of the competition was evident. “We controlled the race, even from practice. Really good qualifying, amazing race, amazing strategy. It was just execution all across the board that won us that race today,” Kirkwood exulted, “because if Palou was in front, he would have beat us,” and taken all three races held thus far.
Palou won both the St. Petersburg street/airport contest and at Thermal in the Palm Desert/Indio area two weeks before Long Beach. “This was a track position race here today, without any yellows,” Kirkwood confirmed. After giving credit to his Andretti Global team and new CEO Dan Towriss, he winner acknowledged that Honda’s “power was amazing, our fuel saving was amazing and the strategy was amazing, all because of Honda. This is an historic event for the 50th [race] and to notch the win for Honda and Andretti Global is absolutely massive.”
On Saturday at Long Beach, the No. 7 Penske Porsche 963, driven by Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy, continued its dominance of the series GTP class, earning a third straight victory after winning both the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the Mobil One 12 Hours of Sebring. In the GTD class, honors went to the No. 177 Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) of AO Racing, as their green “Rexy” was first to the checkered flags, giving drivers Laurens Vanthoor and Jonny Edgar, along with Porsche Motorsports, which has its hone in nearby Carson at the Porsche Experience Center, mastery over the Long Beach streets.
INDYCAR resumes its season the weekend of May 2-4 at Barber Motorsports Park, a natural terrain road course. A week later, IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship races on the WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca natural road course May 9-11.
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