Mid-Ohio Indy Lights: Kirkwood dominates, heads Andretti 1-2

Andretti Autosport’s pole-winner Kyle Kirkwood got the jump on David Malukas, and survived the HMD Motorsports driver’s attempts to pass him around the outside at the Keyhole (Turn 2) to establish a 0.7420sec lead at the end of the first lap.

Danial Frost in the second highest Andretti car retained third equi-distant behind Malukas with Linus Lundqvist in the Global Racing Group / HMD car in fourth ahead of Devlin DeFrancesco (Andretti) and Benjamin Pedersen (GRG/HMD). Toby Sowery of Juncos Racing was the main mover, climbing from ninth to seventh on the opening lap.

Over the first three laps, the top three separated themselves from Lundqvist, but by Lap 7, Kirkwood and Malukas were also pulling away from Frost, the latter falling more than one second behind the HMD driver, and by Lap 10 he was two seconds adrift. That said, Frost had gapped Lundqvist by 3.5sec as the Swede continued to run under pressure from DeFrancesco.

On Lap 11, Malukas ran wide at Turn 10, gifting second place to Frost, but somehow keeping teammate Lundqvist behind him.

At half distance, Kirkwood’s lead over Frost was out to 4.5sec, while Malukas was 4sec further back, with the Lundqvist vs DeFrancesco battle 2sec behind him.

By Lap 25, the closest battle was for sixth, between Pedersen and Sowery. The Juncos driver didn’t quite get it done at Turn 4 that lap, but the same place next time by, he passed the GRG driver around the outside, leaving him behind to fend off Andretti’s fourth driver, Robert Megennis.

Kirkwood eased off in the final lap and still won by almost seven seconds, with teammate Frost completing an Andretti 1-2, 3.5sec ahead of Malukas.

Kirkwood is now back in the lead of the championship by just two points from Malukas, with Lundqvist a further 11 points in arrears.