Kyle Kirkwood has a d a few days to enjoy his first career Indycar victory. In2022, he felt the pressure of a highlytouted rookie trying to ucceed in not thebest of equipment. His move to Andretti for 2023 is beginning to pay dividends. In St. Pete Kirkwood told me he flt less pressure in his new team. I asked him today if the win eased the pressure even more.
“Depends on how people perceive it. Right? I think It relieves something. I don’t know if that’s pressure. Because now it’s almost seems like there’s more pressure because people are like, Okay, now that he’s proved that, let’s see him continue to do this, you know, and and there’s pressure from that as well. So it’s a new type of pressure. So it’ll continue.”
As for when nhe might win again, Kirkwood doesn’t have a particular trackm in mind.
“I mean, I have my favorite tracks, right, that I feel like I’m better at than others. But it really depends on the weekend, how we roll out. And I’ve yet to run a road course with them (Andretti) except for at Thermal, which we were really fast. So there is promise there too. We could be really good at Barber.”
The morning session began with some issues, but the team appeared to have figured them out near the end of the practice.
“They’re (running conditions) okay. I mean, we only did four laps at the end. We were having some gremlins that were fighting which is very normal for not running a car for a year then rolling it out here. So you’re always fighting some little things, but we got through it. We ran like four laps there at the end and then and then yeah, the car fell awesome. I thought it was like Man, this thing is planted. Like we got a fast race car. “
The amount of pressure doesn’t seem to bother Kirkwood. I think his win last Sunday was the start of a multi win season.
As of 3:53 pm Kirkwood is sixth fastest with a lap of 224.8906 mph.
The Pit Window by Mike Silver 