Ending his 2024 IndyCar season in seventh with Andretti, Kyle Kirkwood sees his improvements in consistency and oval performances as responsible for his progress.
Just three years ago he ended his debut season in the series in 24th, making the jump to 11th in 2023 following his move to Andretti from AJ Foyt Racing. He has shown that year on year he can make the step up and he is setting his sights on an oval victory in 2025.
Making gains on ovals
He admitted on the media content day to Pit Debrief and other outlets that the main area of improvement was his oval performance, achieving a pole in Nashville.
The race was going tremendously as he led out front in the opening stint. However, a terribly timed caution dropped him to 10th. Kirkwood had pitted just before it.
In the end he came back through to finish P4.
“I think one of the key things that I’ll take from last year is oval performance. I think as the year progressed, my oval performance got a lot better. Continuing that trait through this year will be very important for me because that’s somewhere that I needed to excel on.”
With an incredibly competitive grid, having strong oval performances is vital to contend for the championship or even find your way near the front of the field. Leading the field at Nashville gave Kirkwood a taste of it.
“For me, it gave me the confidence, a taste of what we need out of the shorter ovals to now carry into the season.”
Consistency is key
2024 was Kyle Kirkwood’s most consistent season. He only had four finishes outside the top ten. His sole podium came in Toronto.
Despite not winning a race in 2024, the Floridian saw the season as more successful than the 2023 campaign where he won twice. Andretti found themselves with a chance to win more frequently than in 2023. The team made a step in performance, as Colton Herta showed by finishing P2 in the championship.
“But if you actually look at last year and you don’t just look at the results, you would see that we probably put ourselves in winning contention a lot more often than I think we did in 2024.
“In 2023 we had two opportunities to win. That was Long Beach, that was Nashville, and we won both of them. Last year we gave ourselves an opportunity at I think it was Road America we were leading the race, Laguna Seca we were leading, Detroit we were leading, and then Nashville we were leading in the first portion of the race in all those races, yet we didn’t win.”
He acknowledged that there have been lessons learned from the 2024 season that he hopes will lead him to more wins in 2025.
“There’s takeaways from everything, but really it’s just getting those big finishes and also continuing that consistency that we had last year.”
