It’s been a rollercoaster second IndyCar season for Kyle Kirkwood, but last weekend he delivered a tricky win in Nashville to give Andretti its second victory of the season after his own Long Beach success in April.
Now Kirkwood’s sat ninth in points, it begs the question – just how good or bad has the season actually been for the sophomore?
Let’s not forget that Kirkwood entered IndyCar having won all three of its feeder series titles in a row as well as two other titles in what makes up the most impressive junior resume in North American racing history.
There were flashes of pace but plenty of errors in his rookie year at AJ Foyt, so it was uncertain what we’d see in 2023.
What we have seen on the plus side is two wins – neither of his highly-rated team-mates Colton Herta and Romain Grosjean have one – and he’s also regularly been Andretti’s fastest driver. He is the highest of the four Andretti drivers in the championship, and might have been on par with reigning champion Will Power in the points had less gone against him.
On the downside, Kirkwood’s racecraft has been questionable, and errors have led to the kind of inconsistency we saw from him last year. While he leads Andretti, he could be a lot further ahead, and these are the standards he’s going to be held to if he keeps winning races.
Kirkwood himself said after his Long Beach win that he had expected to win an IndyCar race at some point, and becoming more consistent was the most important goal for him.
Asked what it would take to see more weekends like Nashville, Kirkwood replied: “Honestly, the team has done a great job.
“Every weekend we’ve gone into, I think we’ve done everything pretty much exactly how it should be played.
“I think we just had a lot of incidents this year, whether it’s my fault and I’ve done something dumb, or we got into something that was like a dumb incident that we can’t control.
“There’s been a lot of both, to be honest.
“Just executing. Today was just such a smooth race. Strategy played in our favour. I was hitting my marks the entire time and everything worked out well for us.”
Kirkwood’s got a refreshing manner with the media. He can be fun, honest, insightful, introspective and self-aware, which makes for a gripping and absorbing discussion.
As well as Andretti’s general inconsistency across all of its cars – an old problem it shows no sign of fixing – racecraft has been Kirkwood’s biggest drawback. Whether it’s incidents he’s triggered himself or cropping up in bad positions, it’s caused countless issues.
He hit Conor Daly in St Petersburg, was penalised for contact with Will Power in the Indy GP, hit Alex Palou and then got a blocking penalty at Mid-Ohio, and was sanctioned for hitting Helio Castroneves at Toronto.
Despite saying that he doesn’t see team-mates as competitors in a question about Grosjean after the race, Kirkwood had also made unnecessary contact with Colton Herta as part of three incidents in two corners that what would ruin Herta’s race.
Taking bumper-to-bumper traffic to a whole 'nother level for @ColtonHerta.