Kyle Kirkwood in the No.27 AutoNation Andretti Autosport Honda says he has no idea how he held off Scott McLaughlin to claim his second win of the season in Nashville on Sunday.
Starting from eighth place, Kirkwood had a great strategy to claim victory just ahead of McLaughlin and championship leader Alex Palou and speaking following the race he commented saying:
“I’m not sure how we held off Scott (McLaughlin), he was so fast at the end. We were really good on the initial laps, but right there at the end they were so fast and just ran me down on that last lap. I’ve got to give it up to the AutoNation team and all of Andretti and Honda. They played everything in my favor, to be honest. They gave me all the tools I needed. I really only made a couple passes on track and they cycled me to the front on strategy and we just made really smart decisions and hit all our marks. A solid day for the 27 crew. Last time I was here in Nashville was not a very fun event, we were super-fast and I just needed some kind of redemption and we got it here today. It’s super cool and hats off to the crew because they did a phenomenal job.”
Romain Grosjean in the No.28 DHL Honda felt that he had a decent day as he ran up front in the race for most of the day and came home in sixth place just behind Scott Dixon and speaking following the race he commented saying:
“It was a decent race for us. I think strategy wasn’t on our side today. We got into traffic and spent a lot of push to pass trying to pass cars. We ran our black tires early and had a long stint on the greens at the end. It was okay, but we just lost positions there. But happy with top six and obviously very happy for Kyle and the team. The good news is that I can cut the mustache now.”
Devlin DeFrancesco finished the race in 26th place and speaking following the race he commented saying:
“It was a very, very tough day for the Andretti Steinbrenner team. I really don’t know what happened. I just lost the front (of the car) on the way in (to the turn), so we need to investigate. We’ll come back swinging next week at the Brickyard.”
Colton Herta says he was super disappointed with how his race panned out as he finished the race 21st place and speaking following the action he said:
“It was a super disappointing day. We qualified third and I think we had a lot of promise from there. We were working to make the alternate tires last and then got ping-ponged into the wall and things just went wrong from there. We didn’t want to jeopardize anything at the end so just parked at the end of the race. Congrats to Kyle, great win for the team but obviously disappointed for the 26-car.”