Detroit Grand Prix takeaways: Kyle Kirkwood's second 2025 win leads U.S.-born podium

DETROIT — Alex Palou 5, Kyle Kirkwood 2.

That’s the score when it comes to INDYCAR wins this year, with Kirkwood picking up his second victory of the season at the Detroit Grand Prix, where Palou got wrecked but didn’t seem to have the pace to match Kirkwood.

"I knew we were going to have a good points day — I wanted to keep it clean because of [Palou’s crash]," Kirkwood said. "But also, I was like, ‘I've got to win this race.’"

The Andretti driver has earned both of his wins on street courses (his first of the year came at Long Beach) and even with the victory and Palou’s 25th-place finish, Kirkwood still sits 102 points behind Palou in the standings, nearly a two-race gap with 10 races remaining in the season.

"That's still a mile away, but it puts you back in a position where you feel like you might be able to get that back," Kirkwood said.

"But I'm sure we're going to go to road courses and Palou is going to do his thing. So we'll see what happens."

Takeaways from Detroit, which capped a five-week stretch where INDYCAR drivers were on-track every weekend:

All-American Podium

The podium (top-three) finishers were all born in the United States, a first for the INDYCAR series since Mid-Ohio in July 2020 when Colton Herta, Alexander Rossi and Ryan Hunter-Reay went 1-2-3 in an Andretti sweep.

Kirkwood and Herta (third) gave Andretti two of the spots, with A.J. Foty Racing’s Santino Ferrucci finishing second.

The Indianapolis 500 last week had 14 countries represented in the 33-car field. The full-time 27 drivers hail from 12 different countries: 11 drivers from the United States; three from New Zealand; two from Denmark and Sweden and England; and one from Mexico, Cayman Islands, Spain, Australia, Netherlands, Canada