Kyle Kirkwood is confident Andretti Global are closing the gap to Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR) entering the 2026 IndyCar season.
“I think we're close,” said Kirkwood, 27. “We're not too far off, and we obviously work towards being at those 10/10ths.
“It's something that I've talked about to a few people here, some of our short oval pace is execution in some of our road course pace. If we can nail down those things -- and it's not far off. It's like a couple tenths (of a second) here and there. If we can capitalize on a few of those areas, we'll be right there in the mix.”
Last season saw the Florida native come out of the gate with force, hitting a career-high in wins with three - second-most in the IndyCar Series only to CGR’s Alex Palou, who had eight - en route to fourth in the championship standings.
“We proved to be right there in the mix at certain tracks, it's just not all of them,” Kirkwood said.
“And quite honestly, Ganassi isn't at 10/10ths at every track. It's more so their road course performance than anywhere. If we can capitalize on the places that maybe they're not as strong, then we'll have a better outlook into our season.”
For all of the positives of last season for Kirkwood and the No. 27 Andretti Global Honda, there were several drawbacks. The second half of the season saw five finishes of 12th or worse over the last seven races.
“No, execution wasn't impeccable, partially due to me, or maybe mostly due to me,” Kirkwood said. “Yeah, some of our short oval struggles weren't great and the last half of the season was much filled with road courses, which we did struggle on as well.
“Colton (Herta) didn't struggle as much as I did on some of the road courses. Like Laguna, he finished on the podium; we finished way in the back after some penalties. But just getting a little bit better at some of those places, some of it's on me. It's not just, ‘Oh, we need to get faster at some places.’ I need to execute a little bit better, too. It's a combination of things.”
There have been some key changes at Andretti over the offseason. Will Power comes in after 17 years with Team Penske, replacing the Formula 2-bound Colton Herta alongside Kirkwood and Marcus Ericsson. Andretti also added another former Team Penske veteran in Ron Ruzewski as its team principal, allowing Rob Edwards to slide over to the role as the team’s Chief Performance Officer.
And Kirkwood has been hard at work over the offseason picking the brain of Power, a two-time IndyCar champion and 45-time race winner, including the 2018 Indianapolis 500. Don’t expect him to tell you what he’s learned, though.
“I can't really give away any secrets,” Kirkwood said. “I'd say there've been some interesting moments that were like, ‘Oh, wow, that's a completely different look on some things. It's pretty much every day that there's something new. You go down these rabbit holes in IndyCar if you like towards setup philosophies, and every team is a little bit different, and it's like one little segue point that separates and then you end up on two different islands.
“It seems like other teams do that, right, where they segue at one point and end up on a different island. But they all have the same process of how they think about it, it's just how do you start that process and where does it take you from there.
“It's interesting how other teams and other drivers and engineers focus on certain things.”
