NASHVILLE — No one truly knew what to expect for Sunday’s Big Machine Music City Grand Prix. The final 80 lap race on this current layout came to an end on Sunday. A race dubbed in “Crashville” had been the equivalent to INDYCAR for what the likes of Daytona or Talladega are to NASCAR.

The two previous races so far run on these city streets were messy ones. Out of the 160 combined race laps turned, 43% of them were under caution periods with 38% of the cars being loaded back on the haulers early after crashes.

The inaugural race saw 9 cautions for 33 laps. Last year’s was one less yellow (8) but more caution laps (36).

That left pole sitter Scott McLaughlin without a plan coming in.

“You don’t have one,” he said on Saturday after scoring his second pole in as many years here. “I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. You can’t even plan really. Guy won last year doing six stops.

“You just got to play it on the run and try and do the best job, execute every lap that I can. Pit stops need to be good.”

McLaughlin led the first 24 laps before peeling off from the lead on Lap 25. He didn’t elect to pit with three others under the first caution which at the time, left everyone puzzled.

McLaughlin wasn’t ready to peel off the Firestone alternate tires yet like everyone else minus second place starter Pato O’Ward was. That caution ruined their initial plan of running as long and as hard as they could on that opening stint.

“I think we had a really fast car today. Just that first yellow destroyed a few things, which is probably going to play,” he said. “You hope it doesn’t come, but it came. You take it or lose your advantage, try to reset and go again. That’s what we decided, the latter.”

O’Ward ran second through the first stint, 25 laps, before making his first pit stop of the day. From then on his race was inside the top 10 and eventually finishing 8th.

“It was a tough day in Nashville,” O’Ward rued. “I think we were too late in taking our first pit stop; we lost a lot of time there. It’s pretty much a track position race. It’s tough to pass, especially when you have fuel numbers and you can’t really use the push to pass. I’m bummed we went backwards.”

Kyle Kirkwood and Romain Grosjean each started on the Firestone primary tires and went a few laps longer. Grosjean pit on Lap 28 and Kirkwood on Lap 29.

That overcut put Kirkwood ahead of Grosjean on the next sequence while McLaughlin rode behind.

Fourth place starter Alex Palou did pit under that caution (Lap 14) and was now off sequence. They did so knowing that it would put them on a three-stop strategy, but with how sloppy this race had been, it could also put them on the lead cycle as well.

That proved to be wrong actually. This once crash filled race was surprisingly clean. As the laps clicked by, Palou’s championship chances were in grave danger.

Josef Newgarden came from 9th to run in fourth, one spot behind Palou while Kirkwood and McLaughlin ran several seconds ahead.

Grosjean faded some while Palou was in a massive fuel save. As a result, he couldn’t touch his push to pass which saw Kirkwood and McLaughlin run a race of their own.

Without a caution coming, it was becoming increasingly clear that Palou was going to have to pit again. His last pit stop came on Lap 45 and making it 35 laps when the window was 31-32 laps wasn’t going to happen without a caution.

Barry Wanser, his strategist, told Palou to just push hard for a few laps then duck in in hopes that pushing like they were going to have to would help them not lose even more spots that they’re already going to drop.

“Today we were, like, done,” Palou admitted. “We couldn’t really save that much fuel. It was impossible. We were already saving and losing like 2 seconds a lap, 2.5. They told me to go.

“We did one full lap of going because we wanted to get some lap time, try and pass some cars that were, like, 20th or whatever. Suddenly the yellow came.”

Linus Lundqvist, making his INDYCAR debut for the injured Simon Pagenaud slammed the Turn 11 wall on Lap 71 bringing out the second caution with nine laps remaining. This was the break that Palou needed.

On the ensuring restart, Kirkwood pulled away but only just briefly as we’d see the third and final caution fly for an incident in the same Turn 11 for Felix Rosenqvist, Agustin Canapino and Benjamin Pedersen.

Now, Palou was in an even better position.

“Then another yellow that helped me a lot so I could at least be a bit more aggressive or defensive on the last restart,” Palou continued.

Following an 11-minute red flag, the race resumed on Lap 77. Kirkwood got another great restart while McLaughlin didn’t.

“I was trying to do my best to hunt him down at the end. I just had a poor restart,” he said. “I had no temp in my rear tires for some reason. So annoying. I don’t know what happened. Like I didn’t change my procedure. I’m normally pretty good on restarts, but I was terrible.

“Yeah, got to do a little bit of study on that. I think if I was a little bit closer, I might have been able to maybe throw a little dive bomb at him. Unfortunately couldn’t.”

Kirkwood sailed to his second career win by .7633-seconds while McLaughlin had a second straight runner-up here.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m disappointed,” McLaughlin said. “But it is what it is.

Palou was just happy to finish behind McLaughlin here for a second straight year too. 2 drivers on the same podium for 2 straight years and both have vastly different emotions in doing so.

“I was just wanting to finish the race,” said Palou. “Without our issue on strategies, I was wanting to go for the win honestly. I thought we had the car and the pace to fight for the win today.

“Yeah, we lost an opportunity, but also super happy to be on the podium, especially with the lap that we needed today, that we got it.

“Yeah, it was a 10 out of 10 day at the end results-wise.”

It was an otherwise clean day with only 8 caution laps. We should have known better too. We all thought Detroit was going to be chaotic but proved otherwise.

 “I can’t,” Herta said on Friday on if this year will be any different than the first two years. “I don’t know if it will be. Yeah, obviously the first two races it caused a lot of chaos. INDYCAR is always trying to look for ways to make the racing better. They feel that this is a good way to do that.

“I’m hoping this new restart zone fixes a lot of the problems we’ve had in the past and it’s a little bit more of a normal race.

“You don’t want a full green flag race because that makes it stale for the racing. We definitely want to do better than eight or nine cautions than it has been the last few years.

“I’m hoping it works out. I’m not sure really if it will or it will not. I guess we’ll see.”

We saw a thrilling race that was vastly better than the previous two Honkey Tonk’s.

Palou said that he wasn’t too shocked to see just 8 caution laps this year. He noted that if you look at Detroit, Belle Isle, the past three years, it was two years in a row it was completely, like, crash-ville as well. Suddenly the last one, no cautions till the last lap.

“It goes that way when we know it’s tight, we know there’s going to be a lot of yellows. We should have thought about that maybe more. It was just purely our fault,” he continued.

“We expected a lot more cautions throughout the race. So, yeah, we learned I think we were super, super lucky today. Luck was on our favor because we were not going to make it. Then those yellows came.

“But, yeah, it was a very stressful race. I think I lost like five years of my life just trying to save fuel, a lot of fuel, and praying for a yellow. It finally came, which was good for me, not for you. It was perfect for me.

“Yeah, it was overall a really good day. Could have been a lot cleaner and a lot easier. We wanted to make it a bit too hard.”

For Kirkwood, this was a step back in the right direction in an otherwise frustrating sophomore season.

“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.”

It was redemption for him.

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.”

Next year, an expected 200k could be on hand on the new layout that speeds through Broadway and will crown a season champion.