NASHVILLE — Kyle Kirkwood drove a flawless race in taking home the win in Sunday’s Big Machine Music City Grand Prix. However, the 24-year-old won’t take all the credit for the win. As good as he was, he said his team was just as good, if not better to help land the Andretti Autosport driver in victory lane in the third rendition of the big event.

“Yeah, it was phenomenal afternoon,” Kirkwood said. “I mean, we absolutely nailed everything it felt like, to be honest. We had a great strategy. Car was extremely fast. Through the entire race, I feel like we were probably one of the fastest cars. I look back, I have no idea, but I assume we were.

“Andretti Autosport, AutoNation Honda keep giving me a great car that’s good on street courses.”

Kirkwood notes though that this win was redemption for here last year and for the previous two street races on the season.

“This should be more than two wins, to be honest, on street courses given the cars they’ve given me,” he continued. “I’m thrilled with this one here today. This is kind of redemption from last year. A dumb incident. Redemption from Toronto. Redemption from Detroit.”

He made a move on David Malukas late last year that sparked a caution. In Detroit, he crashed with a Fast Six car while pushing too hard in the second round. He got ran over at the start and while he rebounded for a top 10, it was a race weekend that could have been. In Toronto, he was the lead car on the lead strategy before making a costly mistake on a mid-race restart.

Still, this one while it certainly feels good, he notes that it’s not like the first win, however.

“Doesn’t feel as good as the first one,” he said. “The first one was absolutely amazing at Long Beach. Now this is a step in the right direction. This helps us in our championship, get us back in the top 10 range, I imagine. This was a phenomenal day for Andretti Autosport on the 27 car.”

Kirkwood noted that he didn’t pass many cars on Sunday but despite doing so and coming from 8th at the start, he won. That’s a full credit to the No. 27 Dallara-Honda team for Andretti Autosport in having a great strategy day and flawless pit stops to score him the win.

“A lot of things happen in the pit strategy,” Kirkwood admitted. “The first pit stop, a lot of things happened there. I passed a few cars. Wasn’t a bunch. I passed Colton, Malukas and I think Will technically for position. We kind of overcut Romain and got McLaughlin and Palou pitted. I think that’s kind of what cycled us up there.

“It wasn’t like I drove through the field from eighth place. It was more like we played our strategy, played our cards right, did everything right when we had clean air. It cycled us up to the point.”

Kirkwood noted that a win like this is just as satisfying as one to where he dominated like he did in Long Beach to where he won 53 of 85 laps.

“I think they’re both extremely satisfying in different ways, right? As a driver, if you just drive through everyone, you feel like you race super well, you get a satisfaction I guess within yourself.

“You also get a satisfaction on days like today where the team executed. Then you have this aura around you, you have kind of this feeling within the team that everything’s clicking, which is something that’s so important for future races, not only just that one race.

“Honestly, I think ones like today are even better than ones where you feel like the driver is on top of the world.”