Kyle Kirkwood (Andretti) returned to the top spot on the box in Nashville, Tennessee for the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix. Kirkwood’s last win came during the Long Beach Grand Prix early this season in a surprising much more event filled race. The big Machine Music City Grand Prix historically has been the home to many crashes and on track incidents in the past however this year the race remained relatively clean compared to previous years. This year there were two red flags that halted action which is in stark contrast to the 8 cautions, red flag and 10 car DNF we saw in 2022. Kirkwood led for 34 laps in the race and never looked back.
For Kirkwood the win mark his second career win and second win of the 2023 season. Kirkwood had the following words afetr the race, “I think this year with everyone being so, ‘It’s going to be a crash fest, it’s Crashville,’ and that sort of thing. Maybe there’s a hesitancy from all the drivers. We had that last year at Detroit where everyone was like, ‘It’s a street course so we’re going to expect some yellows, get off the greens early, blah, blah blah.’ Then Will (Power) started on primaries (tires) and walked away from everyone and it stayed green the entire race.”
Scott McLaughlin was not able to capitalize on his pole position. McLaughlin had the following words after the race, “I’m disappointed. I don’t know what happened…I didn’t change my procedure and I’m normally pretty good on restarts. I was just terrible. I’ve got to do a little bit of a study on that.”
Top Ten After the Race
Top 10 in points: Palou 513, Newgarden 429, Dixon 387, McLaughlin 371, Ericsson 357, O’Ward 353, Power 337, Lundgaard 297, Kirkwood 290, Herta 285.