Extended race in Toronto presents challenge for hopeful, confident Kirkwood

Written by Morgan Holiday

Credit: Joe Skibinski

IndyCar is headed to Toronto this weekend, to one of Andretti Global’s best tracks on the calendar. In the past four IndyCar races in Toronto they’ve had at least one driver on the podium, and last year Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood took a stunning 1-2 finish in both qualifying and the race.

For Kirkwood, his second place in last year’s race in Toronto was his only podium finish of the year. It’s been a drastically different year for him so far, as his three race wins and current fourth place in the standings clearly show.

But he’s coming into this weekend off the back of one of his worst weekends so far this year. In the Iowa double-header Kirkwood qualified 18th and 21st for the two races, before crashing out on Lap 153 of Race 1 and only improving to an 18th place finish in Race 2.

Outside of those two races Kirkwood has only finished below 11th place one other time, at the Indianapolis 500. While it’s been a theme of Andretti and their drivers to struggle more on oval tracks, they now look ahead to a track they tend to excel on.

It’s a busy time of the season, with the back to back race weekends piling up. While it can be hard to bounce back, Kirkwood has found that it’s nice to have no time to sit with last weekend’s misery.

“You know what, last weekend was an anomaly for us,” Kirkwood told the media ahead of the Indy Toronto weekend. “That's not a normal thing. A lot of negatives to look at.

“But it's actually nice when you get out of a weekend, you don't have time to dwell on it. You focus on what went wrong, how do we fix it for the next time, but then you forget about it. You're like, Okay, Toronto is coming up, this is our best weekend of the year, this is where we switch the motive.”

Extended race length presents tyre challenge

Credit: Joe Skibinski

While the Andretti team is coming into what is typically their best weekend of the year, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to secure a good result. This year presents a special challenge as the lap count has been extended from 85 to 90, so the team can’t rely on the exact same strategies as last year.

DIVEBOMB asked Kirkwood what the biggest challenge standing in their way of having a good weekend is and he cited tyre strategy and the extended length of the race as something that the team is looking into as a potential challenge.

“That's a good question, something we're digging into now,” he answered.

“The street course tyre, they've extended this race, right, which in some ways they're trying to fill a TV window, but it might change up the strategy than what we've seen in the past.

“Given the street course tyre that we've had, the alternate has just not lived past a certain amount of laps. It makes a ton of grip, great for qualifying, great for putting down fast laps, but it doesn't last very long.

“Given that the race has extended some laps, that means you need to do a longer period on those tyres. Getting nailed down, trying to run the best strategy with that, hoping it's not a lottery, you don't get yellows in the wrong time or obviously crucial things.

“We're going to do our best to try to overcome those adversities and differences, work our way through the weekend. We're going to try to turn what might be a challenge hopefully into a positive for us.”

Confidence heading to Andretti’s best track

Credit: Joe Skibinski

Despite the change in lap count and the potential issues that brings, Kirkwood’s confidence in himself and the team remains at a high.

“Yeah, very high,” he commented on the team’s confidence level. “When we sit and look at all the best events that we have in a season, this one has to be at the top of our list.

“Obviously street courses are our forté. We're really good at Long Beach, St. Pete, Detroit, Toronto, all those street courses. But Toronto for some reason has that little bit more for us.

Right now, fingers crossed, the weather's looking good. That's what we need. We need good weather, good conditions. Hopefully we'll have a nice, clean weekend.

“Last weekend we could say was our worst event. No shame in saying that. We're going to come into this weekend now with our heads held high and hopefully have the best event of the year, if we already haven't had some good events this season.

“Like I said, looking to close out the season with another win here and roll out into the other four.”

It’ll be all eyes on Andretti this weekend as the reigning winners at this track try to take on yet another victory in Toronto. Kirkwood also spoke about the focus that other teams will have on Andretti coming into the weekend.

“I mean, just like whoever wins at certain races, there's going to be a target on their back,” he said. “They're going to be looking to them for information and trying to catch up with them from the start of the weekend. That will likely be us, Colton and Marcus, for this weekend because we just have been so good on street courses.

“We will be a focal point of a lot of teams, but not in a bad way, right? That's a good thing that you are a focal point for people. It means they're trying to catch up. I mean, yes, there's a target, but it's not a negative in any way.”

IndyCar takes to the track for the first time for practice at 3pm ET on Friday, where Kirkwood and Andretti will be among those getting up to speed for what will hopefully be an action-packed weekend in Canada.