Maybe it’s because Kyle Kirkwood grew up close to the water in Jupiter, Fla. Maybe it’s because the race comes early in the season, when everything is still fresh.
Or maybe it’s because the race is the closest thing his engineering team at Honda Racing Corp. has to a home game on the IndyCar circuit. Any or all of those guesses are as good as anything Kirkwood can come up to explain his success at the seaside Grand Prix of Long Beach, where he’ll enter the 177-mile race as its defending champion.
“I don’t really know why, exactly, that place suits me better than anywhere else,” he said. “For sure I’m just more comfortable around that circuit. Every year we go back to Long Beach it’s just incredible the performance that we’re able to put on.”
Two of Kirkwood’s six IndyCar wins, including his first, came at Long Beach. Only four men in the 50-year history of the race, have won more often — and Kirkwood has started there just four times.
Two of his three IndyCar pole positions came at Long Beach. And over the past three Long Beach races, he’s led 100 laps, more than twice as many as any other driver.
That success has helped him climb the leaderboard in the championship standings. He finished a career-best fourth last year and will come to Long Beach atop the table this year, holding a two-point lead over Alex Palou after four races.
“Long Beach is a special one to us, right?” said Kirkwood, 27, who has a win and three other top-five finishes in 2026, marking his best-ever start to a season. “Of course we’re not in the position right now where we’re like, ‘oh, we need to win this race to win the championship.’ But somewhere in the back of our mind we know that this is one of our best opportunities to win.”
Because the 11-turn, 1.968-mile Long Beach course is so tight, passing is difficult. That makes Saturday’s qualifying and the pit stops in Sunday’s 90-lap race crucial.
“The name of the game around Long Beach [is] less than just having a straightfoward race where you just dogfight, just go out there and try to pass the car in front of you. It’s more strategy and a bit of a chess match,” said Kirkwood, whose Andretti Global team is known for its strength on tight, bumpy “green” circuits such as Long Beach.
“Half of a second in the pit lane is a lot of time on a race track at 180 miles per hour. You’ve got to make sure that you don’t give up that gap so it plays a big role. There’s likely at Long Beach only two or three pit stops. It makes a lot of pressure on those two or three stops.”
Kyle Kirkwood takes part in a practice session at the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in February.
(David Jensen / Getty Images)
Palou, whose Ganassi team excelled in the pits last April, agreed.
“Last year we were able to move up front because of the pit stops,” said Palou, who has finished in the top five in each of the last four Long Beach races but has never won there. “Obviously some drivers lost position. When you have a great team behind you, that backs you when [you] are in the pits, it just makes your race and your weekend a lot easier.”
While Kirkwood has been able to keep Palou in his rear-view mirror at Long Beach, he has never finished ahead of the Spaniard in the season points race, with Palou winning four of the last five championships.
“He’ll go down as one of the best drivers in IndyCar history,” Kirkwood said. “People look at it like ‘man, he’s just beating up on everybody.’ It’s actually pretty cool to be able to compete against somebody that’s going to be considered one of the best in the world for many years to come.
“We’re always trying to keep up with him.”
The two drivers will be sharing a cheering section this weekend since both use engines built by Honda Racing Corporation USA, which is headquartered in Santa Clarita. Eleven other IndyCar drivers also have Honda power plants and it has become customary for the drivers to visit the Honda facility in either Santa Clarita or Torrance the week before the Long Beach race, which marked its golden anniversary with Kirkwood’s win a year ago.
“That’s obviously a home race for them, which is even more pressure for us to execute,” said Kirkwood, who is based in Indianapolis. “Last year was a big year for them, right? Winning it in the 50th year, it was pretty special.”
For Kirkwood, however, it was just another day at the beach.
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