Winners and Losers: Grand Prix of Arlington

Credit: Chris Owens

Kyle Kirkwood proved in Arlington that it doesn’t take a crash to beat Álex Palou, coming up through the field from seventh on the grid to win the race ahead of Palou and his teammate Will Power.

IndyCar’s inaugural Grand Prix of Arlington seems to have been a success all around, though on track some drivers and teams succeeded more than others. Let’s take a look at some of the winners and losers from the weekend in Texas.

Winner - Andretti Global

It was an up and down weekend for Andretti Global, though their results by no means show it. Marcus Ericsson took his first career IndyCar pole position on Saturday, while Power and Kirkwood qualified further down in fourth and seventh respectively. 

After missing out on the Fast 6, Kirkwood was by far the fastest driver on track on Sunday, making his way steadily through the field. The three Andretti cars, despite their speed, were all slowed down at different points in the pits. Kirkwood had issues in multiple pit stops that lost him significant time, but that couldn’t stop him from climbing his way up the field. With 16 laps left in the race he was able to pull off a gutsy overtake on Palou to take the eventual win, grabbing his and Andretti’s first win of the year.

Power had a solid race, easily his best of three races with Andretti so far, and grabbed his maiden podium with his new team in a third place finish. Ericsson, who had won the first half of the weekend with pole position, was relegated to fourth by the end of the race. He will be the most disappointed of the three Andretti drivers, but it was still a solid weekend for the Swedish driver that rounds out a dramatic but excellent weekend for the Andretti team.

Winner - Caio Collet

Credit: Travis Hinkle

Collet, last year’s runner-up in the Indy NXT championship, achieved his best IndyCar finish so far in Arlington this past weekend.

The Brazilian driver qualified 16th on Saturday, a few places ahead of both of his fellow rookies Mick Schumacher and Dennis Hauger. On Sunday, Collet kept calm and ran a clean race to finish 12th, this time more than a few places ahead of his fellow rookies.

Hauger proved a tough man to beat in Indy NXT last year and he’s continued to be tough to beat for his fellow rookies in the beginning of their first IndyCar season. But after a great weekend in Arlington, Collet is only eight points off Hauger in the rookie standings, making a statement for the future. If Hauger wants to stay on top of the rookies, he’s going to have to work a little bit harder.

Winner - Marcus Armstrong

Armstrong has been on an impressive run of form since mid-2025, and is continuing to prove it isn’t a fluke in 2026. His performance in Arlington was reminiscent of his other two races this season, qualifying well and running in the top ten for most of the race.

Arlington was his first trip to the Fast 6 this year after narrowly missing in out St. Pete. He qualified sixth on Saturday in the new single-car qualifying format, bookending fellow Marcus (Ericsson) in the top six. In the race, Armstrong ran a solid race on his way to a 10th place finish. It wasn’t his best result of the year after a fifth place result in Phoenix, but these are the kinds of results that Armstrong needs to be pulling out with Meyer Shank Racing as he hopes to impress a top-level team. 

Arlington makes it three for three on good performances from Armstrong this year, hopefully cementing a groove for the New Zealander for the rest of the year.

Loser - Christian Rasmussen

Credit: Paul Hurley

Rasmussen has, in just over two seasons competing in IndyCar, established himself as a quick and aggressive, if overly chaotic, driver. His abilities have paid off in the past, granting him a maiden win in his second season. The inverse of that aggressiveness is that Rasmussen doesn’t tend to be particularly consistent, either running at the top or at the bottom.

Arlington was one of the latter kind of weekend for Rasmussen, though not all the factors were under his control. He put on a solid qualifying performance to secure an eighth place starting spot, but faltered in the race and slipped down the order.

Rasmussen was running 21st with four laps to go in what had thus far been a cautionless race, when an electrical issue caused him to stop on track and bring out the first caution of the day. As a result, he was also the first driver to retire from the race, putting him in 25th place for his worst result of the season so far.

Rasmussen’s consistency is his issue and that showed in Arlington, which will ultimately be a weekend to forget for the Ed Carpenter Racing driver.

Loser - Romain Grosjean

Grosjean’s return to IndyCar started out brilliantly but has since been less than ideal. After an eighth place finish with Dale Coyne Racing to start the year in St. Pete, Grosjean has failed to finish the following two races.

In Arlington, the Frenchman qualified 15th, ahead of his rookie teammate Hauger but certainly a middling result. In the race, he was running in 20th ahead of the final restart with just one lap to go. At the restart, Kyffin Simpson made contact with Nolan Siegel, who in turn made contact with Grosjean, putting both Siegel and Grosjean into the wall. The pair failed to finish the final lap of the race, giving Grosjean a 23rd place finish to show for his efforts throughout the weekend.

Neither this incident nor the incident that put Grosjean out of contention in Phoenix have been his fault, but with his reputation for chaos and crashes, it certainly hasn’t been an auspicious restart to his IndyCar career.

Loser - Single-Car Qualifying

IndyCar trialed a new qualifying format in Arlington, single-car qualifying for the top six. Instead of the Fast 6 getting a set amount of time for all the drivers to make several attempts at securing the fastest time, each driver was given once chance, one at a time, to set a lap time in hopes of going fastest.

The concept is exciting, the stakes certainly higher. A typical qualifying format gives drivers a margin for error, if they mess up on their first flying lap, they usually have a chance for at least one more. Single-car qualifying means each driver has one shot, no chance to improve if things don’t go exactly right. In theory, it’s dramatic and fun to watch.

In practice, at least for those watching the broadcast, the reality was a little… boring. With just one car to watch at a time and no clear view of how much a driver was gaining or losing to their rivals, it wasn’t the dramatic affair the concept suggests. Whether or not this is an inherent failing of the format or a failure on FOX’s part to adequately assist the viewer has been up for debate, but either way, single-car qualifying certainly didn’t deliver in the way IndyCar would have been hoping for.

One would hope that with the proper tools and preparation, single-car qualifying could be a high stakes and exciting way to determine the hunt for pole. As it was in Arlington, it simply felt like drivers going around the track one at a time.