First Time on the Streets of Arlington - IndyCar 2026 Round 3 Recap

IndyCar's return to Texas came not on the oval or at COTA, but with the brand-new Arlington street circuit. From the initial renders, the track seemed pretty decent, but seeing cars on-track is something else entirely. So, let's go over my notes from the weekend as we see this track for the first time.

King of the Streets

Andretti had a pretty good qualifying, with Marcus Ericsson getting his first pole position in IndyCar, Will Power starting 4th, and Kyle Kirkwood starting 7th. Things fell apart immediately on the first round of pit stops. For Ericsson, his right-front tire changer had an issue with getting the tire on during his first stop. During all three of Kirkwood's stops, a wheel nut was dropped on the exchange. At Power's stop, the crew released the car too early, nearly sending him colliding with the incoming car of Louis Foster.

Despite all of that, Kirkwood walked away with a dominant race win over Alex Palou, with Power grabbing the last podium spot and Ericsson finishing 4th. It's yet another case of Andretti finding success in spite of itself. Kirkwood may be the championship leader coming out of the weekend, but there's no chance of him maintaining it long-term if the consistent operational issues aren't cleaned up.

Marshaling Concerns

In practice 2, Scott Dixon spun in turn 4 and was hit a few seconds later by Power. Both cars were able to continue, but both were damaged in the incident. In the commentary booth, there was a bit of a conversation about the yellow flags, since there didn't seem to be one in that corner as Power approached. Ultimately, they determined that it was a result of the incident taking place around a blind corner.

Normally I side with the marshals in these kinds of situations, but this feels like it could have been completely avoidable. If the marshal post can't see that corner, then maybe the post should be moved. There was plenty of time for a local yellow to have been displayed, and the only indication Power ever had that something was wrong was when the red flag came out on his dashboard, which only happened right as he was turning into the corner. Something needs to be changed in the future to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Another Penske Roller Coaster

In practice 2, Josef Newgarden lost the rear of his car in turn 2, overcorrecting into the outside wall. It looked like a pretty routine left-front suspension repair job, but it turned out that debris penetrated the tub, requiring Newgarden to go to a backup car. He would send that car into the Fast 12 in qualifying. He fell back throughout the race itself, finishing in 15th.

Scott McLaughlin, meanwhile, clipped the apex wall in turn 8 during qualifying, leading to a crash into the outside wall. While Penske was able to repair that car, he had his fast laps deleted, relegating him to shotgun on the field. He had an impressive rally with a combination of speed and strategy, finishing just outside the top 10 in 11th.

People talk about the concept of "Penske perfect", and the team's exacting standards when it comes to discipline and attention to detail, but the team has a bit of a history over the past two or three years of writing off cars during practice and qualifying and dragging them back up to respectable finishes. That isn't what I would call "Penske perfect", so we'll see if Newgarden and McLaughlin can clean things up and put together some more complete race weekends outside of the ovals.

The Siegel Experiment Revisited

Last weekend at Phoenix, Nolan Siegel qualified in 9th, and I had hope that maybe this was the season where he would actually wake up and put in some quality finishes. By the end of the race, he had fallen back into his second consecutive 20th-place finishing position. Today, he converted a 22nd-place starting position into a last-lap DNF at the end of a day when he'd been running well into the 20s all day.

Needless to say, he's well behind the pace on the 10th-place championship standing position that Tony Kanaan has said he'll need to make to justify keeping him in the 6. The only thing that remains to be seen is if his daddy's checks keep clearing or if McLaren decides to put an actually competitive driver in the car for 2027.

The Rookie Class

Now that we have a few races under our belts, we can start to get a feel for how the rookies are doing this year. While Dennis Hauger has been putting in some good results, Caio Collet was the best of the rookies today with a 12th-place finish. It was a pretty quiet race for him, with no real drama. The two of them seem to be pretty skilled, and while Hauger is destined to continue along the Andretti ladder, it will be interesting to see if Collet can find a landing spot on a bigger team.

Mick Schumacher, meanwhile, started 17th and dropped back due to an incident responsibility penalty and a spin, ultimately finishing dead last of the cars on track, one lap down. I wasn't expecting Schumacher to immediately be fighting for wins, especially in at best B-tier equipment, but I was pretty disappointed in his racecraft. Both of the incidents he was involved in were very sloppy, and I would have expected a bit more racing IQ from a driver with both F1 and WEC experience.

New Qualifying Format

IndyCar decided to try out single-car qualifying for the Fast 6 this weekend. Initially, I was a bit mixed on this decision. Navigating traffic and finding clean air is an important skill in group qualifying, and it would be disappointing to see this go away, but there also isn't a lot of traffic to worry about with only six cars on track, so realistically there wouldn't be much of a difference on that front.

The bigger issue, as it turned out, was preparation. With only an outlap to get tires and brakes into their operating windows, it's harder to get the car thoroughly prepared for your flying lap. There isn't really a solution to this, since adding an extra outlap would make the runs take too long. It also puts more pressure on getting the lap perfect. In group qualifying, if you make a mistake on a push lap, odds are you'll have enough time to give it another go. With this format, however, you get one shot to get it right.

At the end of the day, if single-car runs make the sport more accessible to newcomers, I'm all for it. We'll see if IndyCar considers this experiment enough of a success to roll it out to future races this season.

The Arlington Circuit

Like I said, the track seemed decent when the first renders and simulations came out, so I was cautiously optimistic for the race this year. Now that we've actually seen it in action, it seems to be pretty good. It's fast and wide, giving plenty of opportunities to pass and providing a challenge to the drivers. The bumps were a concern after practice 1, but the drivers didn't seem to have many issues navigating them. I was also concerned about the long back straightaway, with speeds reaching over 190 MPH at times, but the high speeds didn't seem to be much of a concern. Feedback overall seems pretty positive, so I think IndyCar has managed to find a win with this one.

I'm still not a fan of the double-sided pit lane that IndyCar keeps insisting on shoehorning into every new track they design. Eventually, the merge between the two sides is going to create issues that could be avoided with a more typical pit lane layout. I also would like to see the pit-out lane extended slightly to try to prevent issues on the merge back onto the track.

Conclusion

IndyCar races on new circuits tend to devolve into chaos. We've seen it on the streets of Nashville and in the move of Detroit back downtown. However, I don't think anyone expected the race to go mostly caution-free. Overall, I think the drivers put on a pretty good show this weekend, and it was interesting to see the strategies converge. We have two weeks before the next round at Barber, so we'll see how the season develops in that race.