Kirkwood sees off O’Ward for first IndyCar oval victory

Kyle Kirkwood survived multiple incidents to take his maiden win on an oval in IndyCar at Gateway, seeing off Pato O’Ward in a tense finish.

The Andretti Global driver took over the lead with an undercut on the final set of pitstops and kept O’Ward at bay to claim his third win of the season at World Wide Technology Raceway.

The result was Kirkwood’s fifth-career win, but was his first on an oval and any track outside of a street circuit.

Kirkwood’s key to victory came on lap 234, when Andretti Global brought him to pitroad as one of the earliest to stop of the frontrunners, allowing Kirkwood to leap past Scott Dixon, who had inherited the lead as the only one not to have pitted when the prior caution flew.

The same late caution that gave Dixon the lead had brought Callum Ilott and Felix Rosenqvist to pitroad on lap 204 of 260, hoping to stretch fuel to the end, but neither driver could make the strategy work, as Ilott was last to pit with five to go, surrendering the lead to Kirkwood.

O’Ward ran in Kirkwood’s tracks from there, having risen to second through the pit sequence. But he was unable to make a charge to the lead, coming home 0.5398s short of Chevrolet’s first win of 2025.

Christian Rasmussen overcame a fire during his first pitstop to snag the final podium spot in third, gambling and pitting early on lap 225 to leapfrog some of the other frontrunners. Dixon faded to fourth, with Santino Ferrucci mounting another fierce oval charge to take fifth.

With Conor Daly sixth and Rinus VeeKay seventh, points leader Alex Palou could only manage eighth for Chip Ganassi, as Marcus Armstrong and Robert Shwartzman capped off the top 10.

It was an eventful evening for the IndyCar field, with the opening caution came just four laps into the race, when Devlin DeFrancesco lost control of his #30 RLR charger and hit the Turn 1 wall. Polesitter Will Power’s day was undone by a tyre failure on lap 47, sending him into the Turn 3 wall and out of the race.

But the scariest moment of the race struck on lap 131, when Louis Foster got up into the marbles running in the dirty air behind Ferrucci and slid into the outside wall at Turn 3. The damage caused Foster to spin into the inside wall on the front stretch, where then-leader Josef Newgarden collided with his stricken machine and was sent airborne before sliding to a stop by the start-finish line. Both drivers emerged from the incident unhurt.

The final caution came on lap 195, when David Malukas made a similar mistake and slid into the Turn 4 wall.

While he didn’t suffer an accident, front-row starter Scott McLaughlin pulled off with a mechanical issue on lap 216, leaving all Team Penske contenders out of the race early on a night when they expected to contend for the win.

IndyCar Gateway – Race results