Kyle Kirkwood won the Freedom 250 on the streets of downtown Washington on Sunday, finishing 3.09 seconds ahead of Christian Lundgaard, with Will Power third and Marcus Ericsson fourth, ESPN reports.

The race was staged as part of the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of American independence. President Donald Trump waved the green flag to start it and the mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, was grand marshal.

The afternoon that reopened the championship

Alex Palou started from pole and finished twentieth.

The unravelling came in stages. He took a drive-through penalty after apparently hitting a tire during a pit stop, then had a loose wheel, then spun. Any one of those is recoverable on a street circuit; three is a season's worth of bad luck compressed into two hours.

His championship lead over Kirkwood fell from 133 points to 91, with three races left. That is still a substantial cushion, and the arithmetic does not make Kirkwood a favorite. What it does is make the remaining races worth watching, which they were not on Sunday morning.

Street racing does what street racing does

Temporary circuits are narrow, walled and unforgiving, and the incident list reflected it. David Malukas and Sting Ray Robb collided at Turn 4 in an early caution. Scott McLaughlin hit a tire barrier trying to pass Kirkwood late on. Marcus Armstrong was penalized for avoidable contact involving Christian Rasmussen.

Rinus VeeKay, asked about the last of these, was blunt: "If Rasmussen's around, you know you're going to crash. Either he does or you do. It sucks. It's stupid."

We report that as one driver's view of another, immediately after an incident, which is the least reliable moment in motorsport for a judgment about anybody. It is quoted here because it was said, not because it is established.

Racing a city

Running open-wheel cars past national monuments is a promotional exercise before it is a sporting one, and the presence of a president and a mayor at the start line makes the point. Street races exist to bring the sport to people who would not travel to a permanent circuit.

They also produce racing of a particular kind: hard to overtake on, easy to make mistakes on, decided as often by pit lane and caution timing as by pace. Kirkwood's win was built on staying out of the walls while the driver with the fastest car did not.

What we could not establish

We could not establish the attendance, the length or layout of the circuit, the number of laps completed, or whether any driver or spectator was hurt. We verified this account from a single publication.