Two victories must be deemed a successful season for Kyle Kirkwood because I doubt many people saw this coming.
One victory? Sure, Andretti Autosport can have its day, and for all the rough results Kirkwood had last year, he showed plenty of speed and potential. It clicked at Long Beach, and there have been plenty of other good days for Kirkwood. A few times it worked out for him. A few other results were lost, not all because of something he did wrong. In a frantic race that saw a variety of pit strategies, Kirkwood and his team, with strategist Bryan Herta leading the pit box, took advantage of the situation and pulled out a victory.
Kirkwood was one of the cars that did not pit under the first caution for David Malukas' rear wing failure, and the prevailing notion was that was the wrong strategy. Instead, those cars at the front were able to pull away and make their pit stop without losing ground under green flag conditions. The difference is Kirkwood leaped ahead of Scott McLaughlin in that pit cycle and that put him in control of the race.
Like Long Beach, Kirkwood went untouched throughout this race. The late cautions closed the gap, but Kirkwood was in the clear. Three drivers have won multiple races this season: Álex Palou, Josef Newgarden and Kyle Kirkwood. How about that for a list?
2. It feels like one pit cycle was the difference between Scott McLaughlin winning this race and finishing second. Kirkwood leaped ahead of McLaughlin and that was it. It is frustrating to lose a race like this, but McLaughlin ran well the entire race. One car beat him. At a race like Nashville, where in three years we have seen about 400 ways a driver can lose a race, for McLaughlin to drop from first to second, there are worse days that can be had.
Considering how much Team Penske and Chevrolet struggled on street courses this season, a day where McLaughlin spent nearly the entire race in first or second is a good note to end on.
3. It is getting very difficult to believe Álex Palou could lose this championship in any way, shape or form, and today is another good example of how the cards keep coming up in Palou's favor. Palou did stop under the Malukas caution, the best running of the leaders to do so, and it was iffy if Palou could make it on fuel as this race played out. Palou was saving for much of the second half of the race and the team almost sound resigned to making a pit stop within the final ten laps.
But then Linus Lundqvist hit the barrier with ten laps remaining. Then three more cars were stacked up on the ensuing restart, and Palou went from pitting from third and possibly looking at finishing at best in 15th to pulling out his eighth podium finish in the first 13 races.
Other teams were saving, but Palou's crew sounded like it was a matter of when a final pit stop would come, not if. This season has been near flawless, but this could be the race with the most points saved for Palou. If the Lundqvist caution does not happen we could be talking about Palou having to cough up at least 20 points in the championship. He was always going to be leaving Nashville as the championship leader, but he expanded his lead today when it very well could have taken a dent.
4. Josef Newgarden only lost four points today. Newgarden is 84 points back with four races to go. Being down 80 points with five races to go, there is no margin for error. You cannot afford to give any points up. Four points lost is the best of the worst case scenarios. It means more work in the final four races, but the mountain is not that much taller.
Newgarden was in prime position to benefit if Palou had to stop in the closing laps. Newgarden wasn't sure he was going to make it on fuel and he was saving too, but Palou's team was in trouble and it sounded like Newgarden could make it through.
This could have been a favorable mometum swing in the championship for Newgarden. He drove a good race. In all five street course races, Palou finished ahead of Newgarden. In all nine road/street course races this season, Palou has finished ahead of Newgarden. And it hasn't been for a lack of trying on Newgarden's part. Nothing has gone wrong for Palou, and there is nothing Newgarden can do about that.
5. Scott Dixon has finished in the top five in seven races, tied for second most. Dixon has 12 top ten finishes, the second most. And yet Dixon is 126 points off the championship lead! For all these finishes, Dixon hasn't been in a race. He has led only 13 laps this season. There hasn't been a race where Dixon has been the guy. I don't want to say that is a concern, but we have seen it with older drivers where they do well, but aren't winning, and then the next season the results get worse.
Dixon isn't done. You don't accidentally finish in the top five in seven of 13 races and in the top ten in 12 of 13. He is also teammates to a driver having one of the best seasons in IndyCar in the last 30 years. It isn't over yet, but time is running out on Dixon to have that day in 2023.
6. After three months from hell, Romain Grosjean ended up sixth in this race and drove well. There were a few moments where it looked like Grosjean was going to end up in the barrier and this would be another race lost, but Grosjean kept it heading in the right direction. Grosjean was running with Kirkwood but went longer before his first pit stop and that knocked Grosjean back a little. Small victories though, and sixth is a heck of a lot better than where Grosjean has been running lately.
7. Marcus Ericsson went off strategy early and it paid off to get him from 20th on the grid to seventh. Ericsson lost sixth on the penultimate restart after it was deemed Ericsson blocked Grosjean. I can see how that was the call. Grosjean put his nose out and then Ericsson cut to the left. Either way, it was another strong race for Ericsson. Whether or not that means Chip Ganassi is going to lock him up for 2024 onward, that remains to be seen.
8. Patricio O'Ward went the wrong way and ended up eighth. O'Ward didn't have the greatest success on street courses this season. Outside of St. Petersburg, which even then he was put in the lead after Grosjean and McLaughlin came together, there wasn't a street race where O'Ward was constantly at the front. He was going the wrong direction at Long Beach. Detroit slipped away from him and he wasn't a factor at Toronto. The bad news is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course is next, a track where O'Ward's results are all over the place.
9. Another street race with Christian Lundgaard finishing ninth. Lundgaard did nothing flashy today, but he again pulled out a result for a Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing organization that has fluctuated wildly this year on speed, and yet Lundgaard has been mightily consistent. The Dane is eighth in the championship. For a team that was at rock bottom just over two months ago, that is rather good.
10. Despite nearly missing the start of the race because he didn't have his ear buds, Will Power ended up tenth. Yeah. That is about right. Power didn't match the pace of the frontrunners. Good but not a great result. It is a top ten so it pads the record book a bit.
11. I am going to tackle the rest of the field in team pairings, starting with Meyer Shank Racing because Hélio Castroneves was 11th. Castroneves gained some spots avoiding the carnage and seeing other cars fall out around him. The Brazilian kept his nose clean and it got him a respectable result. Nothing wrong with that.
Linus Lundqvist, on the other hand, had the better drive of the two MSR drivers. Lundqvist did get in the turn 11 barrier after running a tad wide late in the race. It cost him a top fifteen result, but Lundqvist had probably MSR's best drive of the season. He was running respectable and seemed to be a greater threat. He picked up fastest lap on debut. When was the last time a driver did that? It was one minor error, but this entire weekend was a big plus for the Swede. I am sure other teams have taken notice.
12. It is hard to backflips for 12th, but that is what Callum Ilott has to show for the 2023 Music City Grand Prix. Juncos Hollinger Racing hasn't had that breakout speed we saw at a few races last season. Remember, Ilott started on the front row of last year's Laguna Seca finale. JHR is solidly in the middle of the field. Twelfth is a good day. It is Ilott's best finish since 12th at the Indianapolis 500. Take it and move on to Indianapolis.
Agustín Canapino was caught in the final caution for the stack up with Felix Rosenqvist and Benjamin Pedersen. Canapino then parked his car off course. It wasn't going to be a brilliant day for the Argentine driver. With all the cars that dropped out, it is still a top twenty, so it wasn't that bad when you look at it on paper. That is actually quite a fair result.
13. The only Ganassi car outside the top ten was Marcus Armstrong, and if cautions had gone differently, perhaps he would have made the top ten. Either way, it is another race where Armstrong was the top finishing rookie. His average finish this season is 11.778, which is damn good for a rookie. Ganassi would be foolish not to lock Armstrong down for the entire 2024 season.
14. Ed Carpenter Racing had a reasonably good day with Rinus VeeKay in 14th and Ryan Hunter-Reay in 16th. VeeKay was in a top ten position before he drove into Alexander Rossi on the straightaway heading to turn nine. This damaged his car and Rossi's, and it earned VeeKay a penalty. I think that was the right call. VeeKay veered haphazardly into Rossi. With the number of incidents today, VeeKay was fortunate the damage was only finishing 14th, but he should have been in the top ten today.
Hunter-Reay has run about this well ever since he was placed in the #20 Chevrolet, which isn't great. The problems at ECR have always been deeper than the drivers this season. Conor Daly's average finish at ECR was 17.714. Hunter-Reay's average finish is 20.8333. Replacing Daly was never going to change much.
15. Graham Rahal started 15th and ended 15th. Rahal had to make an early pit stop because the alternate tires wore quickly for him. I think Rahal will be happy he doesn't have to run another street course this season.
As for Jack Harvey, he was running ahead of Rahal for most of the race, but had to make a late pit stop for fuel. The bad break was Harvey's stop was just before the Lundqvist accident, and just after that caution came out, Harvey had the steering wheel jostled from his hands and it sent him in the turn eight barrier, knocking him out of the race nine laps early and placing him in 24th.
Some drivers have the steering wheel jostled from their hands and it is just a bad break and everyone moves on. When you are the driver that is 23rd in the championship, it is just another tick in the wrong box.
16. Sting Ray Robb did nothing, which is a change for him, and it earned him a lead lap finish in 17th. Not great but far better than most of Robb's races this season.
David Malukas had a rear wing failure combined with a gearbox issue that caused him to stop on track after completing only 11 laps. Malukas was in the top ten at the time. It is not clear how this race would have turned out, but Malukas was encouraged for today and his race ended before he would really show what he could do. That has been the story of Dale Coyne Racing in 2023.
17. Two Andretti Autosport cars had great days, and two Andretti Autosport cars had miserable days. It was another miserable day for Colton Herta. Herta stayed out during the Malukas caution, but then dropped back on that restart, and it really put him in a bad position for the rest of the race. He got trapped and couldn't maintain ground as the race played out. Then Herta brushed the barrier just ahead of the Rosenqvist/Canapino/Pedersen stack up. That effectively ended Herta's race, but it wasn't going to be much better than 15th at that point.
Think back prior to Texas when Andretti Autosport flipped strategist and put Byran Herta on Kirkwood's car and Scott Harner on Herta's car. Since that time, Kirkwood has won twice, Herta has won no races and Herta had another strategist change with Rob Edwards now on his pit stand. Kirkwood is now one position, five points, ahead of Herta in the championship. What if that first change had never been made? Where would Herta's season be?
I am not sure what the hell happened to Devlin DeFrancesco. One moment he is running wide in a corner and then he is out of the race. It looks like he brushed the wall exiting turn 11 with about 15 laps remaining and that ended his race, placing him 26th.
18. This has not been a great year for McLaren. Alexander Rossi lost a top ten because of Rinus VeeKay. Felix Rosenqvist was never really running for a top ten spot, and then Rosenqvist drove slightly wide on a restart, got into the marbles and slid into the barrier, which led to the stack up with Canapino and Pedersen. McLaren has had a few of these days where none of the cars look on it. For a team that did a lot of talking, the results are not backing it up.
19. Santino Ferrucci was able to finish on the lead lap, but that was the best he was likely hoping for in this race. That is 18th. The stack up wasn't Benjamin Pedersen's fault, but it was another incident Pedersen found himself in. Sometimes, you just need to see the end of the race.
20. It was nice we got to see a straightforward Nashville race. I am sad this is the final race on this course. I thought this was a rather good one. Everything from turn four through turn eight is silly and unnecessary, but somehow in three years we never saw a car pinball from the outside barrier to the inside barrier in turn five, and in the first practice session held in 2021 I thought that was a guaranteed incident.
There were things to like about this course. There were three good passing zones, and drivers could even pull off moves into turn 11 and turn one. Besides the turn four through eight section, turns one and two were ridiculously tight with pit exit. It worked but it wasn't the ideal street course.
Next year's course looks fine. There appear to be four hard braking zones and there are really only five turns to the circuit. There will be passes. On paper, the track looks a little uninspired, but if there is passing and great racing, does it really matter? Does it matter that the pit lane is squeezed into a parking lot? I think we have seen from the double-sided pit lane at Detroit and Toronto's abomination that the pit lane really doesn't matter. Formula E has plenty of good races with similar pit lanes.
IndyCar was able to keep Nashville on the schedule despite losing its paddock area due to stadium construction while keeping the race going over the Korean Veterans Memorial Bridge and it got the new track to use part of Broadway.
Ten years ago, Nashville is Baltimore. The city is changing and the race gets kicked out never to return despite drawing a great crowd. Instead, IndyCar is included in the evolution of the city, and with this race becoming the finale, it is better positioned for longevity.
Let's be patience but everything is pointing in the right direction.
21. Six days until IndyCar runs on the IMS road course again. We are staying busy, but the races are disappearing quickly.
