After July slump, Kirkwood looks to rekindle early-season magic

Kyle Kirkwood had a delightful month of June. The Andretti Global driver took two IndyCar Series wins to open his run from Detroit through World Wide Technology Raceway, and added a fourth-place result at Road America to put himself second in the championship, a manageable 93 points behind Alex Palou.

Then July arrived, and five races in four weekends unwound most of the Floridian’s momentum. A tire failure at the first Iowa Speedway race, more problems in the second, and a stiff penalty for knocking Rinus VeeKay off track at Laguna Seca left him with some of his worst finishes of the season.

Entering August, the anything-is-possible feelings from June are long forgotten. Kirkwood is fourth, 213 points back from Alex Palou, and ruled out of title contention. The presumptive champion, along with Pato O’Ward in second place, are out of reach, but third place is up for grabs.

“Iowa and Laguna were kicks in the nuts,” Kirkwood told RACER. “Iowa is clearly a catastrophe for (Andretti Global) as a group, but really, what I'm looking at here is the ability to claw back to third. We’re 15 points behind Dixon, and that's obtainable. We have some good races on the calendar beginning with Portland. It hasn’t been our best race, but we've been decent there in the past.

“Then if you look at Milwaukee, Colton (Herta) was on the podium at Milwaukee (last year); Nashville, we were super-strong, particularly against Ganassi. So I think that's really where we stand, and trying to stay ahead of (Christian) Lundgaard will be important. That's the title fight for me. Keep ahead of Lundgaard, get ahead of Dixon, and that's a huge win for us.”

While the championship is off the table for this year, 2025 still represents an opportunity for Kirkwood – along with the likes of Lundgaard, Felix Rosenqvist, and Marcus Armstrong – to achieve a career-best in the standings and prove a point.

“I finished 22nd in the championship my rookie year, then I was 11th and then seventh last year,” Kirkwood said. “And it's just progressively getting better. So if anything, I'm pretty happy that that were already looking like we’ll be finishing better than the previous year. 

“But progression for me is the biggest thing. So as long as I'm progressing and finishing better in championships every single year, that’s definitely a positive thing.”

This has been the 26-year-old’s first experience leading Andretti as its top performer throughout the season. Last year, it was Herta who surged to second in the championship and showed how far the team had progressed, and while Herta’s season hasn’t gone entirely according to plan, he produced throughout July with a trio of top four finishes. The third member of the team, Marcus Ericsson, hasn’t been as fortunate, but as a group, Kirkwood sees an Andretti squad that’s only getting stronger.

“This is my third year there and I think we're definitely better than we have been,” he said. “I think back through the schedule and we’ve been better at a lot of tracks than we were even a year ago. Marcus has been weathering the storm and last month, for sure, Colton was getting quite a bit more out of it than what we did, which shows you the quality of our program where – except for Iowa, and maybe one to two other places – we’re always having at least one of us right there in the thick of things.

“There’s been some ups and downs, but the team’s performance has never really tapered off in any way. Even when things have gone wrong, we still have one car that’s right there, and people tend to forget about the bad things when you have a few good things strung together. So that's what we're going to try and do these last three races.”