April 12, 2025 — LONG BEACH, CA
- Kyle Kirkwood took pole in a dominant performance for Honda’s NTT INDYCAR SERIES teams
- Colton Herta lines up second, locking out the first row for Andretti Global
- Honda-powered cars go 1-2-3-4-5 in Honda’s home race
Kyle Kirkwood will lead the field to green for the 50th running of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach as part of a Honda sweep of the top five starting positions in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES field.
This result is Kirkwood’s second pole at Long Beach, in 2023 he also started at the front of the field and led 53 laps en route to his first NTT INDYCAR SERIES victory—part of a Honda 1-5 sweep at the checkered flag.
Kirkwood will line up alongside his Andretti Global teammate, Colton Herta, on the front row. Championship leader and winner of the first two races of the 2025 season, Alex Palou, and 2024 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach polesitter, Felix Rosenqvist, will make up the second row. While the third Honda-powered Andretti Global car of Marcus Ericsson rounds out the top five for Honda at their home race.
Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach Honda Qualifying Results
- 1st Kyle Kirkwood
- 2nd Colton Herta
- 3rd Alex Palou
- 4th Felix Rosenqvist
- 5th Marcus Ericsson
- 7th Marcus Armstrong
- 14th Scott Dixon
- 16th Graham Rahal
- 17th Kyffin Simpson
- 20th Louis Foster-R
- 23rd Devlin DeFrancesco
- 25th Rinus VeeKay
- 26th Jacob Abel-R
Andretti Global Honda
Andretti Global Honda
Chip Ganassi Racing Honda
Meyer Shank Racing Honda
Andretti Global Honda
Meyer Shank Racing Honda
Chip Ganassi Racing Honda
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Honda
Chip Ganassi Racing Honda
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Honda
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Honda
Dale Coyne Racing Honda
Dale Coyne Racing Honda
R – Rookie
Quotes
Kyle Kirkwood (#27 Andretti Global Honda) qualified first: “Amazing day for Honda and Andretti Global. A front row lockout for us in the #27 and #26 cars and just a great day for Honda power—top five here at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. This is a huge result for us as a team, a huge result for Honda, and it gives us a great starting spot to give ourselves the best chance of winning here tomorrow. Should be a great one!”
Colton Herta (#26 Andretti Global Honda) qualified second: “Happy to be starting on the front row for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. I think we have some really strong cars here at Andretti Global and locking out the front row gives us a great shot tomorrow.”
Alex Palou (#10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda) qualified third: “Not number one today, but P3 for tomorrow. It’s a top five with all Honda, that’s pretty amazing. It’s a solid qualifying for us. You always want more, and we felt like we were going to be fighting a little bit more, but it was good! It was fun out there and to fight. We just missed it a little bit. Great job by Honda locking out the top five and for us, starting third, it’s a great opportunity to decide on a strategy and have a clean race and move up. The #10 DHL Honda has been amazing so hopefully we can get the win tomorrow.”
Honda at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach
- Honda has scored 17 victories on the streets of Long Beach—starting with Jimmy Vasser in 1996 and most recently with Scott Dixon just last year.
- Other Honda-powered winners at Long Beach include Alex Zanardi (1997-98), Juan Pablo Montoya (1999), Paul Tracy (2000), Helio Castroneves (2001), Michael Andretti (2002), Dario Franchitti (2009), Ryan Hunter-Reay (2010), Mike Conway (2011), Takuma Sato (2013), James Hinchcliffe (2017), and Alexander Rossi (2018-19), Colton Herta (2021) and Kyle Kirkwood (2023).
Where to Watch
- Television coverage of Sunday’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach starts at 1:30 PM PT / 4:30 PM ET on Fox. Complete, flag-to-flag race coverage also will be available on the INDYCAR Radio Network, and SiriusXM INDYCAR Nation (Channel 160).