Detroit Indy Lights: Kirkwood wins again, closes title fight

Race 1 winner Kirkwood, who started from third, immediately sliced his Andretti car past front-row starter David Malukas of HMD Motorsports into Turn 1 at the drop of the green and started hunting down pole-winner Linus Lundqvist.

On the run down to Turn 6 on Lap 2, Kirkwood made his move on the leader and hit the front.

Danial Frost ran fourth in the second Andretti car but had already dropped two seconds to the top three, and Toby Sowery pounced on him on Lap 3 to grab fourth place for Juncos Racing.

Although Kirkwood pulled a one-second lead, the battle for second between teammates Lundqvist was not hindering the pair from keeping well in touch. Devlin de Francesco passed Robert Megennis (both Andretti cars) on Lap 5, leaving him to fend off the Carlin car of Alex Peroni and Benjamin Pedersen in another HMD machine. However, Peroni brought out a full-course caution on Lap 8 when he tried to pass Megennis around the outside of Turn 3 and made heavy contact with the tire wall.

The race restarted on Lap 12, and the drivers remained well behaved into Turn 1, but Sowery was all over Malukas for third, while Frost was struggling to hold off teammate DeFranceso. But it was Sting Ray Robb who made the most progress, passing Pedersen at the restart and then Megennis one lap later.

Up front, Kirkwood was now gapping the GRG/HMD car of Lundqvist, as the Swede again had his mirrors full of Malukas, with Sowery poised just about hanging on, waiting to take advantage of any momentum loss between the pair. On Lap 17, Pedersen finally demoted Megennis at Turn 1, but was already 5sec behind Robb’s Juncos car. On Lap 22, Megennis lost a spot to the second Carlin car of Christian Bogle, who’d taken advantage of the earlier caution to take on a set of new Cooper Tires.

By Lap 22 of the 30-lap race, Kirkwood’s lead was just under 2.5sec, while Lundqvist had a little more breathing room having pulled a second on Malukas. But Lundqvist set his fastest lap of the race thus far on Lap 25, to chip the gap to Kirkwood under 2sec.

That became irrelevant on Lap 26 when Frost had a hand knocked off the steering wheel by a bump at Turn 11, and understeered into the tire wall, promoting DeFrancesco, Robb and Pedersen into fifth, sixth and seventh.

Frost’s wreck was cleared in time to allow a one-lap sprint to the finish, and Lundqvist was all over Kirkwood through Turn 1 but the Andretti driver hugged the middle line, got through Turn 2 better and was able to pull away again, to take his second win of the weekend by 1sec, ahead of the two HMD cars, Sowery and DeFranceso.

Robb lost out at the second restart, getting jumped by Pedersen, Bogle, Megennis and Nikita Lastochkin.

The result leaves Lundqvist leading the championship by just one point over Malukas and four over Kirkwood.