INDYCAR at Arlington 2026
INDYCAR’s Texas stop was at the Grand Prix of Arlington. In typical Texas fashion, everything was bigger with the street track surrounding the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers stadiums. The track consisted of 14 turns and a distance of 2.73 miles. It had the longest straight INDYCAR will have on the calendar at nearly a full mile and consisted of 70 laps.
The supporting races included the Toyota GR Cup, USF Pro 2000, and INDY NXT series. During Friday practices, you could see the drivers from the different series be extremely cautious getting to know the track and gathering data for the their respective upcoming races. The weather turned out to be a factor as the mornings started in the low 40s and warmed up to the 80s. In the end, a forecast of extremely high winds ended up moving the Sunday races earlier, and cancelling the T-Pain concert.
Saturday meant that it was time to put all of the data from this new track, and set your fastest qualifying lap. With the typical carnage that can happen from a street course, being up front is crucial. When it was time for the INDYCAR qualifying, Marcus Ericsson was able to hold back the weekend favorite of Alex Palou, to score his first every INDY pole. Ericsson’s time was nearly a half second faster than Palou’s!
With the threat of a wind storm that ended up averaging 40 mph winds, the race started early. The general consensus of all the racer was that although the track was fairly bumpy, it was an exciting track. It appears that INDYCAR wanted to avoid carnage of the typical turn one incidents, so they threw the green flag before turn 10. Thankfully the racing was clean leaving turn 10 and for the majority of the 70 laps.
It was all about making everything come together come race time and Kyle Kirkwood did just that to take the win. Starting from 7th and moving to the front was done by making the least amount of mistakes and clawing away at the distance of the cars in front. The biggest mover was Scott McLaughlin starting last and moving all the way up to 11th.
Overall the weekend was exciting from seeing sold out grandstands, great racing, and an incredible backdrop of the Cowboys and Rangers stadiums.
