By David Morgan, Associate Editor
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – For the first time in his NTT IndyCar Series career, Kyle Kirkwood is on top of the points standings, but heading into this weekend’s Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix at Barber Motorsports Park, he is keeping the focus on the here and now.
“This year is definitely different. It feels good, but at the same time, we’re three races in, 15 races to go,” said the driver of the No. 27 Andretti Global Honda.
“That’s a huge amount still left in the championship, so it’s still a lot of hard work to do. We’ve had three good races so far. Two of them came on street courses, one of them on an oval, and now we’re at a road course.
“So, it’s pretty important that we have a successful weekend here for our championship run because I think that will just play a trend in how we’re going to be at the rest of the road courses this season. So, a lot of hard work’s gone in to this track, maybe more so at this track than anywhere else on the season. So, we’re excited. We’ll see what we got.”
Kirkwood gave credit for his strong start to the season, which culminated in a win over defending series champion Alex Palou two weeks ago in Arlington, to not only an overhauled organization at Andretti, but also new teammate Will Power, who joined the team after a 17-year stint at Team Penske.
“Very different than I would’ve expected, but in all good ways because Will is very hard worker. He is 45 years old and he’s got more drive and passion and this sport than I think anybody does. So, it’s important to have a guy like that with all that knowledge,” Kirkwood explained.
“It’s willing to share the knowledge and continue to work. He’s very fast for his age, extremely fast. He’s very hard to even match on lap times and yeah, everything about him has been good. His attitude about everything.
Kirkwood added that by bringing Power into the fold at Andretti they have already seen things paying off by being able to pair Power’s knowledge and strengths from his days at Penske with the things Andretti was already strong at to shore up some of their deficiencies to make them a better organization overall.
In four career starts at Barber, Kirkwood has only finished in the top-10 on one occasion (2024), along with finishes of 11th and 12th in his tenure at Andretti and a 22nd place finish in his rookie season driving for A.J. Foyt Racing.
“I think across a lot of the tracks that we go to, right? He’s played a big role in our short oval stuff. It’s the reason why we were, were I think the best car outside of Christian Rasmussen at Phoenix. We just got a little unlucky with the tire strategy and someone got super lucky on it. So yeah, he’s played a big role at short ovals and now I think it’s going to be road courses too,” Kirkwood said.
“The two tracks that we needed help on are the two tracks that Will Power was so, so good at. So, coming here, there’s later races like Milwaukee. Gateway, we won, but quite honestly the Penskes and Will were a lot better than us there. And then going to a place like Portland, horrendous race for us last year. He won that race.
“So, there’s a lot of good things that I think he’s able to bring to the table that will play a big role in performance throughout the season. Not just one track or another, but actually putting a championship together. So hopefully that pays dividends this weekend.”
After the first three weeks of the season, Kirkwood holds a 26-point advantage over Palou in the standings, but noted that the defending series champion still remains as the driver he and the others in the series are chasing, explaining that they will need to just maximize every weekend to be able to stay in the fight for the long haul of the season.
“We know he’s going to be good. There’s no doubt about that. It’s just how is he going to be relative to us? That’s the main focus,” said Kirkwood.
“His qualifying wasn’t incredible year, but his race pace was on a different planet last year. That’s something that we need to understand. We need to push forward and at the end of the day, if it’s a situation where he’s really good on these road courses and takes off, then we just need to counterstrike with how good we are now on the short ovals and how we’re good on street courses.
“So, quite honestly, we just need to get better. If better means finishing in the top five, top three, that’s great. If it means winning, amazing, but quite honestly, we just need to get better in general on some of these circuits. So that’s our main focus. It’s not necessarily focusing on Palou himself; it’s just focusing on getting our race cars right.”
The Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix will run on Sunday, March 29 at 1:00 pm ET on FOX.
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