WASHINGTON, D.C. — Kyle Kirkwood earned his third NTT IndyCar Series victory of the season in Sunday’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix.
The victory pulled the Andretti Global driver within 90 points of championship leader Alex Palou with three races remaining.
While it remains a huge deficit, Kirkwood and his team are not throwing in the towel.
“I mean, we’re doing what we talked about, right? I’m just going to go out there and try and win every single race and see where it goes from there,” Kirkwood said. “It’s starting to pan out.
“I can’t control what Palou does. Maybe in very small circumstances you can. In the sense of where he finished today or where he was going to finish today, there is no controlling that because you’re in the lead. We just had a very fortunate day in the points championship.”
Andretti Global hopes to use all three of its cars with Kirkwood’s teammates Will Power and Marcus Ericsson to take the fight to Palou.
“I think if we were sitting here 40 points out or something like that, it would be a different conversation,” said Andretti Global Team Principal Ron Ruzewski. “It’s still 90 points out. I think to echo what Kyle said, we just have to go out there at this point and try to put numbers up on the board.
“That being said, the best thing we can do is put all three of our cars in front of Palou. That’s really what we’re trying to do, is not just have Kyle win races, but have Marcus and Will on the podium or in front of Palou,” Ruzewski said. “That’s the only way we have a chance.
If we can get all three on the podium every week, that’s what we’re going to try and do every week.”
IndyCar has raced on three new street courses this season and Andretti Global has won all three events with Kirkwood triumphing in Arlington, Texas and at Washington, D.C., while Ericsson won at Markham, Ontario.
“It starts with, like he said, the engineering group. They have done a phenomenal job all this season, whether it’s street courses, road courses, ovals,” Kirkwood said. “We’ve elevated the game, our game, exponentially. It starts with them and the hard work that they’re able to put in.
“Us drivers, we just get in and drive it. We either go fast or we don’t. Quite honestly they’ve given us the tools every single weekend to go fast. Those efforts, that growth that we’ve seen everywhere else, is showing exponentially on these circuits that are brand-new because we’re putting in that much more effort than maybe some of the others are.”
