Kirkwood won 31 of his 50 races on the Road To Indy, and was champion in USF2000, Indy Pro 2000 and Indy Lights. But when the Michael Andretti/Sauber F1 deal fell apart at the 11th hour in 2021, Colton Herta’s planned move to Formula 1 was stymied, he remained in IndyCar, and so Andretti had no room for Kirkwood, his Indy Lights champion.
Instead, the talented youngster spent his rookie season at AJ Foyt Racing, where he showed he had giant-killing potential, but endured way too many incidents. However, Andretti signed him as a replacement for the McLaren-bound Alexander Rossi, and Kirkwood is expected to shine, even alongside established talents such as Colton Herta and Romain Grosjean.
“I've got kind of a reference of what the Andretti Autosport car is already like – I did three days in the car preseason to 2022,” Kirkwood said. “It's kind of funny because in 2022, the entire year I was trying to mimic what the Andretti car was like, and I feel like I never got to that point with the AJ Foyt car.
“I'm so curious to get back in that car and see and know what we were missing. It's something that's kind of been eating me alive through the off-season because you know that's something that Andretti is not going to tell me. But once I get in the car and I'm able to feel it, it's going to be pretty cool…
“I needed a year to learn and try and hone in on my skills and learn all the different things about IndyCar that you don't learn in junior formulas. Biggest thing is pit stops and strategy and having two different types of tires. Those are way different than anything I've done.”
Asked if it was fair to say he was overdriving the Foyt car, leading to incidents and accidents, Kirkwood replied immediately: “That's completely fair to say. You could definitely say that. At the end of the day, when you're 20th and you feel stuck, naturally you're not going to just give up, you're going to push to the absolute limits. In a sense that's what we did.
“We overachieved some places and we underachieved by trying to overachieve at some other places! It's unfortunate events, but I learned so much and I can't wait to take what I learned into this season.”
Kirkwood admits, too, that last year seeing his Lights title rival David Malukas shine on several occasions in his rookie season made him happy. It was, he said, vindication of the quality of the 2021 Lights field.
“[Malukas] did an incredible job last year as a rookie driver,” said Kirkwood. “His drive at Gateway was incredible, just drove around everyone, close to winning. He did a phenomenal job.
“I think him and I were very comparable in the Indy Lights season. I won 10 races, he won seven, and it came down to like a few points at the end of it. It was either one of ours to win. Honestly, I was happy to see him do really well because if we both did not so good… it would be like, ‘Oh, maybe that Indy Lights group wasn't that good’.
“But actually David doing so well kind of put me back on the map a little bit, because it's like, ‘Kirkwood did better than him and won the championship against him, so obviously he's going to have a chance the following year.’ If you look at it in that sense, it actually helps me.”
Having looked at Andretti Autosport’s data traces from 2022, Kirkwood believes his driving style will mesh best with Colton Herta’s, which is no surprise since Kirkwood largely ran Herta’s setups in AA’s Indy Lights team. He’s confident, too, that Michael Andretti’s squad will hold up its end in terms of fundamentally fast cars.
“We know we're going to have a fast car at a lot of tracks,” he said. “Obviously the street courses are probably a strong suit for Andretti Autosport, as well as Indy GP and whatnot, so we expect to be extremely fast there and be able to win races.
“We need to make sure we get all the fundamentals together and make sure the stars align, but that's within our control, too. That's the important thing.”
