American Kyle Kirkwood wins IndyCar’s Freedom 250 in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON — As it turns out, Kyle Kirkwood is known as the “King of the Streets” for a reason.

The Florida native dominated IndyCar’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix on Sunday as drivers zipped around the roads surrounding the National Mall in the heart of Washington, D.C., winning his seventh career race — now six of them on a street course.

“You can’t even put it into words,” said the 27-year-old Kirkwood, who drives for the Andretti Global team. “I’m almost in tears here.”

In the days leading up to the race, Kirkwood could barely stop smiling when talking about the wonder of just being able to compete in D.C., saying “being able to drive and do my profession on these streets is a dream come true.”

Well, he didn’t just compete; Kirkwood crushed the competition, leading 128 of 147 laps and holding off a hungry group of drivers on a pair of late restarts to put an American on the top step of the podium at America’s big race.

“It felt good to dominate. I’m a fellow Florida guy, I live up in Jupiter,” Kirkwood said, pointing at the suite where President Donald Trump, whose executive order paved the way for the race, was watching the celebration.

“I feel it’s fitting an American won,” said second-place finisher Christian Lundgaard of Denmark.

American Kyle Kirkwood wins the Freedom 250 Grand Prix! 🇺🇸 🏁 pic.twitter.com/KSvfBtFZBO

— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) August 23, 2026

Despite what was a physically grueling afternoon, Kirkwood mostly made it look easy during a 2-hour, 41-minute race, having multiple leads of double-digit seconds. But he had to execute in the final laps and hold off Lundgaard and third-place finisher Will Power, his Andretti teammate.

“So awesome to see Kyle win this race,” Power said. “It’s such an epic event, man. I could just never dream of racing in a place like this when I started all those years ago in Toowoomba (Australia).”

There wasn’t much drama, but there was enough to give Kirkwood a challenge. He was running away with the race and had a 10-second lead with 24 laps to go when championship leader and polesitter Álex Palou suddenly crashed.

It was a messy day for Palou, who had a chance to clinch his fifth championship on Sunday if Kirkwood (second in the standings) had a bad finish. But before Palou’s crash and 20th-place finish, he also had a drive-through penalty for hitting another team’s tire on pit road earlier in the race and later saw his team have a painfully slow pit stop.

After Palou’s incident came a jaw-dropping moment: On the ensuing restart, Team Penske driver Scott McLaughlin saw his opportunity to win the race and tried a daring pass on Kirkwood on a restart with 19 laps remaining. Except McLaughlin carried far too much speed into the first corner and slammed into the Turn 1 wall, destroying his car.

Kirkwood had to hold off Lundgaard on one more restart with 13 laps to go, and then cruised to victory from there.

Some other drivers found much more trouble on the streets of D.C.

On Lap 44, Marcus Armstrong made an overly ambitious corner entry and slid into Christian Rasmussen ahead of him, who then took out Rinus VeeKay in a chain-reaction hit. VeeKay was forced out of the race.

The first incident of the race occurred on Lap 36, when American David Malukas smashed into the wall exiting Turn 7. Another American driver, Sting Ray Robb, then came around the blind corner and T-boned Malukas to take both drivers out of the race.

Trump had a major presence before the race, meeting drivers and team owners and then taking “The Beast” limo for a ceremonial lap around the 1.7-mile course, which passed landmarks such as the National Archives and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

The president then waved the green flag from his suite located just past Turn 1 to begin the 250-mile race, which was the longest distance for a pure street course in IndyCar’s history.