The Indianapolis 500 and its historic finish are behind us and it’s almost time to go racing on the streets of Detroit. Alex Palou enters the weekend as the points leader, while Kyle Kirkwood is the defending Detroit winner and Felix Rosenqivst, it must be said, will be walking on sunshine heading into Motor City after his win in Indianapolis.
The race will be contested over the course of 100 laps around the nine-turn, 1.645-mile downtown street circuit. The course’s hardest braking point is by far the hairpin at turn 3, which will also serve as the first turn of the race, as IndyCar prefers to send the field racing on the wide-open backstretch rather than try to squeeze the start in on the start-finish straight, where the race will end.
Last Year
Kirkwood took his second of three wins in 2025 the last time the series visited Detroit, beating Santino Ferrucci to the line while Will Power and Colton Herta battled for third-place, the latter eventually taking the final spot on the podium.
Last year’s race was most notable, however, for breaking a streak of dominance from Palou and bringing hope to the IndyCar community. While Palou had been bested, just barely, by Kirkwood at Long Beach earlier in the year, his sweep of the Month of May, including winning the Indianapolis 500, made it clear that the season belonged to driver No. 10. Kirkwood’s win in Detroit and subsequent victory at Gateway were among a precious few reprieves from the Palou show.
Note: Palou won this race in 2023, when the track made its debut, so don’t get comfortable.
Why Are We Here?
It’s Chevrolet’s world, we’re just living in it, or something.
Detroit being a key market for IndyCar isn’t controversial on its own, but this track has been far from a home run in its now four years on the calendar. The track is cramped, full of 90-degree corners that only incentivize dive-bomb passes, and only provides one straight long or wide-enough for any side-by-side racing. Belle Isle was far from perfect, but its diverse layout with sweeping corners, heavy breaking, and multiple long straights made for racing that this street circuit simply hasn’t produced.
That said, nobody expect IndyCar to leave Detroit any time soon. It’s no coincidence after all that Chevrolet’s global headquarters look down on this circuit from Hudson’s Detroit.
Can Andretti Bounce Back?
I’m only slightly influenced by Kirkwood’s status as king of the streets when I say that it seems more than plausible for him to take the win this weekend. He’s already knocked off the first race on the streets of Arlington, Texas, and put up a respectable fourth-place at Long Beach. If there’s anywhere that Kirkwood is a reasonable bet to return to his winning ways, it’s this weekend’s street race.
That being said, it’s not just about the No. 27 car. Andretti Global at large needs some kind of good news following the Month of May — and the start to this season as a whole, in some cases.
Marcus Ericsson and Will Power sit 12th and 17th in the standings, respectively, with average finishes of 13.7 and 16.2. That’s far behind both their teammate Kirkwood and their own individual abilities. Poor performance on pit road, as well as unforced errors on-track throughout the weekend, have contributed majorly to the team’s woes. A mistake-free weekend that nets a car other than Kirkwood in the top 10 would be a strong start to the team’s much-needed rebound.
Suffering From Success?
Meyer Shank Racing is something of an anomaly, and I don’t necessarily mean that in a negative way. Since its full-time IndyCar debut in 2020, the team has a best points finish of sixth, achieved last year by Rosenqvist, with Marcus Armstrong not far behind in eighth. Prior to that, it was 12th in 2024, also by Rosenqivst, then 13th in 2021, from Jack Harvey.
Now in its seventh year of full-time competition, the team has a whopping eight podium finishes to its name. The catch is, two of those are Indianapolis 500 victories. What’s to be made of this? An Indy 500 win, let a lone two, is no laughing matter in any sense of the word. Rosenqvist has brought fresh life and pace to the team, while Armstrong has truly come into his own throughout 2025 and into 2026, including leading the Indy 500 at the white flag last week.
Even a win on the streets of Detroit will pale in comparison to the 500. So, what’s next for the team to answer is where its next milestone lies. What’s a good weekend for the team in Detroit after winning the Greatest Spectacle in Racing? The only way to go is down, but how close to up can they go in the process?
What Else?
Let’s not forget that Christian Lundgaard won on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course; that felt pretty quickly lost in the chaos of qualifying for and the running of the Indy 500. The Dane won on the streets of Toronto in 2024, so he knows how to put it together on a track like this (he was also a front-runner in the early phases of last year’s race).
His teammate, Nolan Siegel, is riding finishes of 10th and 11th across the last two races. Detroit was the epicenter of his Twitter feud with Scott McLaughlin last year, so an uneventful race this time around and perhaps another top-10 finish would do wonders for the McLaren sophomore.
The Ed Carpenter Racing duo of Alexander Rossi and Christian Rasmussen could use a good week as well. I present that without comment.
Remember the hybrid? Me neither.
Frontstretch Predictions
I like Kirkwood on a street circuit. That’s simple enough. I have a strange itch, based on zero real-world information, that Power pulls out a good weekend, with Palou just behind in third place.
That’s the prediction, I’m sticking to it and I will not help anybody speculate on the stock market at this time.
- Kirkwood
- Power
- Palou
The Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix gets underway on Sunday (May 31) at
Alex is the IndyCar Content Director at Frontstretch, having initially joined as an entry-level contributor in 2021. He also serves as Managing Director of The Asia Cable, a publication focused on the international affairs and politics of the Asia-Pacific region which he co-founded in 2023. With previous experience in China, Japan and Poland, Alex is particularly passionate about the international realm of motorsport and the politics that make the wheels turn - literally - behind the scenes.