IndyCar News: Kyle Kirkwood tops opening practice in Detroit

Andretti Global driver Kyle Kirkwood was fastest in opening practice on the Mickey Mouse Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear street circuit.

Kirkwood dominated on the streets of Long Beach, and it appears he may have the hot setup on the Detroit streets as well.

Kirkwood topped the 80-minute session, separated into groups, with a lap of 1 minute, 1.7509 seconds in the No. 27 Siemens AWS Honda of Andretti Global. That quick trip around the nine-turn, 1.645-mile street circuit in downtown Detroit came after Kirkwood spent considerable time in the pits for repairs to the rear of his car after being nailed from behind by the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet of two-time NTT INDYCAR SERIES champion Will Power.

“I don’t know,” Kirkwood said. “Everyone goes slow around here. The track’s not big enough to fit all the cars, and he got frustrated. Whatever, I guess. I’m not upset. I don’t care. We’re P1.”

Said Power: “I came around, and he slowed up in the middle and made contact. So, I thought, ‘Well, I may as well get a gap now,’ so I just pushed him past the car in front, just moved him out of the way and got a really nice gap.

“The Verizon Chevy was very good on the softer tire. Struggled a bit on blacks to get it exactly right. Yeah. Big, big difference. The soft tires are not bad. They lasted three, four laps, like, pushing really hard. So maybe that bodes well for the race. You can actually use them. The first two street courses we’ve done, they’ve degraded a lot, but that didn’t feel terrible. That may be okay. But my car is certainly better on reds. We just have to work out what to do for blacks. There’s always a lot of traffic here, a lot of chaos.”

Scott McLaughlin began his recovery from crashing out of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge on the pace lap last Sunday by ending up second today at 1m02.0301s in the No. 3 TireRack.com Team Penske Chevrolet. Power was third at 1m02.3862s, 0.64s behind Kirkwood.

“Pretty solid day for us in the TireRack.com Chevy said McLaughlin. We went through our paces and went through our laps and we’ve got a pretty good car. I really want to do this for Chevy on their home ground.”

Two-time series champion Josef Newgarden was the third Team Penske driver in the top four with his best lap of 1m02.4819s in the No. 2 Astemo Team Penske Chevrolet. Christian Lundgaard rounded out the top five at 1:02.6047 in the No. 7 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet, 0.5s behind Kirkwood.

“I think we’re in pretty good shape,” said Lundgaard. “The car is fast enough, obviously; we’re in P3 for the first group in Practice, and we’re in seventh in the first segment in install. The car feels good, and we have the 5 and 6 cars getting more information to get a better idea of what we can expect tomorrow.

“Overall, I’m happy. We came off a good finish at Indy, and there are plenty of races to go. We need to be competitive at every one of them. We’ve had a good start to the season, and we’ll continue that momentum this weekend.”

Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge winner Alex Palou, the runaway series points leader with five wins in the first six races this season, looked mortal in this session. Three-time series champion Palou ended up 15th out of 27 cars at 1:03.0381 in the No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda. Palou locked up his front Firestone Firehawk tires entering a braking zone during the session and rolled past the corner but made no contact in the run-off area.

Defending Detroit winner and six-time series champion Scott Dixon was 18th at 1m03.0985s in the No. 9 PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, 1.35s behind Kirkwood.

2025 Detroit GP Practice 1 Results

(R) Rookie