Kirkwood proves a perfect match for D.C. IndyCar enduro

Kyle Kirkwood loves endurance sports car racing. The Floridian IndyCar Series ace grew up with the Rolex 24 At Daytona and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring as staples in his life, and thanks to his longstanding role within the Vasser Sullivan Lexus IMSA team, Kirkwood can be found in a Lexus RC F GT3 for hours at a time whenever he’s able to fit IMSA events into his schedule.

It made Sunday’s Freedom 250, a 250-mile street race that just so happened to last two hours and 40 minutes – the length of a standard IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship contest – something that proved to be a perfect environment for Kirkwood to thrive.

Given 147 laps to complete and non-stop risks to avert while charging between concrete walls, Kirkwood fell into a rhythm inside the No. 27 Andretti Global Honda that felt familiar. He was rocket-fast, inch-perfect, and flawless for the better part of three hours on the way to victory.

“It was an endurance mindset,” Kirkwood said. “It was keeping it off the walls, doing everything clean, hitting your marks, not making big mistakes. Everything offline was very slippery. Staying on lines was a big part of today. We had the pace, the car, the crew. Everything was teed up for us. We just had to execute and not make any mistakes.”

It’s the same ask made by his Vasser Sullivan team, which is why Kirkwood can move seamlessly between cars and series and deliver for both programs. Despite embracing the endurance mindset, Kirkwood also carried a motivation to correct a big mistake from the previous weekend where he crashed on his own at the Markham street race.

Challenging pole-sitter Alex Palou at the start was the first indicator the Andretti driver wasn’t going to take the long view from the outset, but once he took control of the race before the end of the opening lap, the risk management came into play.

“I mean, we knew it was going to be a battle” he said. “You almost have to look at this race in every sense as a little 500 where it's going to be so many stops. You just kind of want to be there at the end and give yourself a good shot. That was a lot of the mindset. I'm sure it didn't look like it on the start when I was around the outside of Palou. Quite honestly, that was somewhat unintentional. After last weekend, I was very sure I was not going to let myself do that once again.”