Kyle Kirkwood drove a stunning race on Sunday at Mid-Ohio in the NTT IndyCar Series amidst the heat and high speeds. The Florida native qualified 10th and earned the final podium spot after a physically demanding all-green race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
It was the Andretti driver’s best result since his second-place finish on the streets of Detroit. Additionally, with his podium result, the driver of the No.27 moves up to second in the championship standings, 56 points behind Álex Palou.
Speaking at the post-race press conference, Kirkwood talked about the race’s physicality and how much it took out of him by the end of the 90-lap race. An early undercut was key to move himself into position for a top 5, with a podium eventually coming as Andretti beat Juncos on pit road to get him ahead of VeeKay.
“Yeah, that was one of the most physical days I’ve ever had in a race car. I’m cooked right now. Running all green around here with it being hot and this place is just so busy as it is, and it’s qualifying laps every single lap. My shoulders are shot.
“We drove from 10th to third. A lot of it was strategy and pit stops. We had a lot of good strategy that put us in a podium position there, and we also passed some cars in the beginning of the race, so a little bit of both. A really good day overall.”
Pace put Kirkwood on the front foot at Mid-Ohio
Kyle Kirkwood netted his best IndyCar finish at Mid-Ohio, landing in the 3rd and final spot on the podium. The Andretti driver has finished in the top 10 in the last 2 visits that the NTT IndyCar series grid has made to the 2.258-mile course.
Throughout his climb up the Road to Indy ladder, Kirkwood was dominant at the track but seemed to struggle once he hit the main series. He denied that anything had clicked into place for the race on Sunday, or that he had finally “figured things out”. Instead, he credited the team, set-up, and pacing for his positive result.
“Well, it wasn’t that I just figured it out. I wasn’t driving differently today than I have the last four years around this place. We had a really good test here two weeks ago and the car was really good. That pace was proven from practice 1, practice 2, into qualifying. Of course qualifying didn’t go incredible, and even in warmup we were P2. We just had a lot of pace. It wasn’t like I just figured out something, per se.”
Fine tuning the set up before the race
Kirkwood later discussed how he and the team fine-tuned his setup during a private test at the track, prior to the race weekend. During the test, Kirkwood set the top pace, with an unofficial 1m05.354s in the No. 27 Honda. Afterward, the Andretti team as a whole seemed to take a step forward.
This uptick in pace comes after the 27-year-old struggled to find pace over the weekend at Road America.
“Yeah, let’s just talk about all the set-up items that we went through. I mean, it’s a bit of the same that we’ve kind of done at a lot of the road courses. Just fine-tuning it, kind of figuring out some stuff that was needed to be done that maybe we just overlooked in the past. We’re gaining some performance.”
Scratching their head after qualifying slip-up
Across both practice sessions, Kirkwood was firmly in the top 3, slotting in 2nd and 3rd respectively. Despite the promising pace, qualifying did not go Kirkwood’s way. Later on, Kyle Kirkwood would start IndyCar’s 2026 Mid-Ohio visit from 10th.
He admitted that the team was somewhat “scratching their heads” about the drop in pace following the qualifying session, mentioning a struggle to get the tyres in the right spot.
“Quite honestly, I’m reluctant to really say. In Q2 we could have had a little bit of a tyre prep issue, and for some reason one tyre just decided not to work extremely well, and I don’t know if it’s really on us or tyre pressures or build laps or what it is.
“But just didn’t optimize the lap and getting the tyres right, set for the lap. It just wasn’t great because of that. It’s something that we still need to dig into, but we’re still scratching out heads about it.”
