Street-course king just needs to win on more tracks—he has one oval win, too.
Even though it’s very early in the 18-race season with 15 races still to go, Andretti Global driver Kyle Kirkwood is having a heck of a year. Kirkwood is leading the IndyCar points after a top-five at St.
Pete, a podium in Phoenix, and a skillful and decisive win at the inaugural Java House Grand Prix of Arlington, Texas.It wasn’t just luck, either. For the Arlington win Kirkwood flat outdrove two of the strongest drivers in the field. As Autoweek’s Susan Wade put it, “Kirkwood wheeled his No. 27 JM Bullion Honda to a 0.314-second victory margin over four-time and current champion Alex Palou on the 2.73-mile, 14-turn street course through the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex Entertainment District. Both Palou and third-place Will Power—Kirkwood’s new Andretti teammate, the 45-time winner, and two-time series titlist—conceded that they wouldn’t have had enough to catch Kirkwood, who earned the checkered flag under a last-minute caution.”Kirkwood’s pass of the sometimes indomitable Palou was masterful, drafting behind him into a sharp right-hand turn then jumping out to hit the apex first. Did the barely younger driver set up the four-time-champion seasoned veteran?“I’m not sure,” Kirkwood said during a visit to Southern California, where he’ll try to garner another win at the Long Beach Grand Prix April 17–19 on the street courses that seem to be his specialty. “You know, I was catching him so fast. It was a bit of a spontaneous thing.”There was some thought that went into it.“I just thought, you know what, if he recognizes that I’m able to pass him in this corner, on this lap? Then he’ll likely defend for the rest of the race, because, granted, it is a better track for passing compared to some of the other street courses that we go to, but it’s still hard, still very hard. So, I kind of had to catch him off guard a little bit and surprise him, which is why I did a little bit more of a risky kind of late lunge versus maybe trying to get to his gearbox and drive alongside him before you get to the brake zone. So, it was intentional. But I don’t think I could have just bought time and tried to make a pass on him later. I don’t think that would have worked very well against someone like Alex Palou, you know?”He speaks with a degree of respect for Palou, as he does for almost all his competitors. He seems to operate on track with a sense of respect for other drivers.“One hundred percent. This is a dream come true for me, and all these drivers are very deserving of the place that they’re in now, and I’ve got huge respect for all the drivers. Especially for Alex and the drivers up front. It’s always a pleasure racing against them. It’s always a fun, good, clean race when you’re at the front racing some of these guys. So, I’ve got massive respect for them.”Yeah, but would he have more than the six wins he’s accumulated so far if he maybe drove with… less respect?“No, quite honestly, no. I don’t think that there’s been a situation where I was like, ‘Oh well, if I was more aggressive maybe I could’ve won.’ I can’t look back at any event that I’ve ever said I’ve been able to do that. I think there’s mutual respect in this category, right? Where if you start being the bad guy and start doing things wrong, people are going to put targets on your back. They really want to make sure that they beat you and that kind of stalls. I think you’re better off having respect for the racing guys, cleanly racing them how you wish to be raced. And that usually turns into a mutual respect amongst everybody on the grid and helps your races out.”Five of Kirkwood’s wins have been on street circuits, the sixth on an oval. Why does he do so well on the streets?“The street courses suit me for some reason, but it’s also our Andretti global car. They’ve been so good at street courses for many years now. It’s where most of their wins have come from as well. We’ve just got a package; we’ve got a setup that we love at all the street courses, and it tends to work very well for us. Those are the tracks that we’re all finishing up front. It’s not just me up front. At last weekend, we finished one, three, and four, which is a pretty good weekend for any team. So yeah, we need to get a little better at some of the road courses and ovals, but these courses seem to be our specialty and maybe mine as well. We’re looking forward to another one here in Long Beach just in a couple weeks.”Is there a special, secret setup for street circuits? A softer suspension, maybe? “You find a happy medium. You can go down a rabbit hole making a car go over a bump well, but it’s probably not going to corner that well. It’s probably not going to go that quick through the corners with that. So you have to find a happy medium and then hone in on what that is and develop a good race car based on that.”Are street courses hard on brakes? Is that a problem?“I’d say still at street courses our brakes are hotter than anywhere else that we go just due to the fact that you’re going slow and you’re using a lot of brake pressure in some of these big brake zones. There’s just not a lot of airflow that gets to the brakes. So I don’t think it’s something that we’ll completely be able to get rid of because then we’ll have too much cooling at ovals and on road courses, but we manage it well. They’ve done a good job with the current PFC carbon brakes that we run. They operate in a very, very big window. We haven’t had issues with overheating, but they do run hotter than normal.”Kirkwood has won twice in the last four years on the streets of Long Beach.“Long Beach is definitely one of the biggest races for us on the calendar, probably our second-biggest race outside of the Indianapolis 500. So it’s one that we always want to win. It’s one that’s really good for us. As a team, it’s one that I’ve gotten, I think, half of my pole positions on. Hopefully, we’ll still be leading the championship when we get there because I think that’s a point that we can maybe stretch it. It’s just such a fun track to drive, as well, compared to other street courses that might just be all 90-degree corners. Long Beach isn’t that; it’s got much more character due to the geometry of the roads that we get to play with.”How does it compare to the street circuit of, say, Detroit?“Detroit’s all 90s, right? Like, it’s very bumpy. We’re good there. We won the race there. So I like the place, but it’s not Long Beach. Long Beach is a different animal. It’s got the history behind it, 51 years now, and it’s kind of like a mixture of road course and street course, with the geometry of corners and the pace that you’re on there, the grip level that you have, but there’s a lot of consequences if you make a mistake.”With Kirkwood’s resume, you would think he’d be winning at every kind of track. Coming up through the ranks he had championships in Formula 4, F2000, F3, Indy Pro 2000 and Indy Lights. He won championships in each of those series. Then, when he got to IndyCar, the wins came fewer and farther between.“You gotta remember the guys that are in IndyCar, they’re in there for a reason. They’re the best in the world in all the categories that I was coming up through, whether it was US F2000, Indy Pro 2000, Indy Lights—you typically have one or two guys that actually stepped through all three of those categories and then make it into IndyCar, and that’s who I was up against, and that’s who I’m still up against. Once you get to IndyCar, there’s 25, 27 guys that are the ones that won the championships. They are the ones that drove through the categories and made it to IndyCar, and deservedly so. It’s just an immensely hard championship to race in, and you’re obviously not gonna be able to be as dominant as you were in some of the lower categories or karting or whatever. The talent level isn’t as deep as what it is in IndyCar.”In addition to IndyCar, Kirkwood still drives one of the Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3s in IMSA GTD. He raced in both the Rolex 24 at Daytona and at the Sebring 12 Hours so far this year. Does that complement or confuse his efforts in IndyCar?“It definitely suits my driving style, and it just helps. Seat time is everything. It’s like playing any sport, right? If you play golf a lot, you’re likely going to be really good at it. And the more that you can do and more that you can get knowledge on different disciplines, maybe in sports cars too, the more that you can take to your other disciplines. I love doing it. I hope I can continue to do it for the rest of my career. I think it does play a role and is a factor in my performance in the IndyCar too, because it’s just added seat time, added knowledge, and just helps everything.”But he won’t be driving one at Long Beach, even though IMSA GTD will be running there the same weekend as IndyCar.“I’ve done it at Detroit where I did the double, and I actually broke my hand in the IndyCar, and it made for a helluva weekend. We actually won in the GTD, and I crashed out in IndyCar. It ended up being way too hectic, and they took away from both categories.”So no Coca-Cola 600 on the Indy 500 weekend. Does he ever think of Formula 1, like some of his IndyCar colleagues have?“No, I’m leading a championship in IndyCar at the moment, winning races, and and that's my sole focus. I barely even watch F1. So yeah, this is where my heart and soul’s at. And I love being in the US too.”Kirkwood’s next race is on the Barber Motorsports Park road course at the Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix, followed by the Acura Grand Prix on the street course at Long Beach, Calif. Then 13 more races in which anything can happen. But so far, for 2026, so good.
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