NEWTON, Iowa – Kyle Kirkwood was in trouble before his weekend road trip to Iowa Speedway began.
He missed the mandatory weigh-in following Friday’s practice. All drivers have to be weighed by IndyCar officials after the first practice, so the total weight of the car is determined for the weekend.
Kirkwood, however, has been a chronic offender of being late to the weigh-in and IndyCar officials lowered the boom on him Sunday morning.
IndyCar Technical Director Kevin Blanch delivered the word that he would not be allowed to participate in Sunday morning’s practice session because of his punctuality issues.
That came one day after Kirkwood believes he was criticized (though not singled out) by race winner Josef Newgarden for his aggressive racing with the leader when he was not on the lead lap.
Kirkwood finished seventh, one lap down, on Saturday.
Prior to Sunday’s second race of the Hy-Vee INDYCAR Race Weekend at Iowa doubleheader – the Hy-Vee One Step 250 – NBCSports asked Kirkwood his reaction to Newgarden’s inference.
“I’m sure everyone wants to know what I think about Josef Newgarden’s comments,” Kirkwood told NBCSports.com. “To be honest, I really don’t care. I don’t really feel sorry for him because he’s so (bleeping) fast.
“I don’t have sympathy for someone who is super, super fast and passing fourth- and fifth-place guys when you are a lap ahead. I don’t feel bad for him at all. He had a rocket ship of a race car.
“I was racing Alex Palou, Scott Dixon, Marcus Ericsson, and I needed someone behind me. If it had gone yellow, it would have worked out in my favor.
“I feel no remorse for him.”
Kirkwood had another interesting day behind the wheel. This time, he admits he got pushed around a little by the other drivers on his way to an 11th-place finish, one lap down to race winner Newgarden, who scored a doubleheader sweep.
Kirkwood believes he should have finished eighth on Sunday.
“The race went well, we were pretty similar to yesterday,” Kirkwood told NBC Sports afterward. “Where Colton Herta finished is where we should have been. We were in the sixth-place finish range for a little bit but went a little long on a stint and a lot of people undercut us.
“Finishing 11th was OK, considering we qualified 17th and 17th. I thought we were better than Felix Rosenqvist, which is annoying because he finished fourth.
“All in all, a decent day. We went for it, gained some positions, learned a lot. This is a place we need to work on in the future to gain on Penske and be the best of the rest.”
Kirkwood, however, said it was not a clean race.
“It wasn’t cleaner from my point of view,” Kirkwood said. “I thought people raced me a lot harder. There were a lot of people getting shoved out to the gray, myself included.
“I wasn’t shoving. I was the one getting shoved.
“It was tougher today because there was one line around the track where yesterday it was two or three lines. You had to run on the bottom today.”
Kirkwood admits Newgarden is so good at Iowa Speedway, that the rest of the field feels exasperated trying to close the gap on someone so good.
“He is clearly really good around this place, and he has a really good race team that backs him up,” Kirkwood said. “A lot of it is car based for him because his teammates are right there with him. He beats his teammates every time he comes here so he is clearly very good around this place.”
Kirkwood indicated it was much harder to pass in the second race for any of the drivers in the field.
NTT IndyCar Series points leader Alex Palou, however, was able to save the day for his charge to the championship by finishing eighth on Saturday and third on Sunday.
“That was pretty stellar from him,” Kirkwood said. “He has had a hell of season. Whenever things don’t go right for him, they still go right in some way, shape or form.
“Right now, his average finishing position is something like first. You don’t see that very often. Hats off to him because he is doing a phenomenal job.”
Kirkwood had plenty of close calls in Sunday’s race, mostly with his Andretti Autosport teammate Romain Grosjean and the man who used to drive the No. 27 Honda, Alexander Rossi.
“We were racing hard there on that last stint, maybe a little bit too hard,” Kirkwood explained. “I got drove down into the gray, full-blocking maneuver.
“Nothing falls in my favor when it comes to that.”
He was also near the wheel that came off Sting Ray Robb’s car that led to IndyCar parking the No. 51 Honda for the rest of the race.
“It came off right next to me,” Kirkwood said. “I was the first driver to see it. He was on the apron and his wheel comes off and it is coming at my car. I missed it by a good margin, but probably not the best thing for a race driver to see.
“It was a little bit of a flashback to what happened at the Indianapolis 500 (when he was involved in a late race crash with Felix Rosenqvist and a wheel sailed over the safety fence at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“I was through it so quick; I told my team it was going yellow and the yellow didn’t come out for another 10 seconds.
“It seemed like a long time for the yellow to come out. I saw the tire and it took until I was past the start/finish line before they called the yellow.”
This is Kirkwood’s second full season in the NTT IndyCar Series, but his first with Andretti Autosport. He spent his rookie season driving for AJ Foyt Racing in what was essentially a “loan” from Andretti, the team that helped him climb the rungs on the IndyCar Ladder system, including what is now known as Indy NXT.
Kirkwood was asked if the season at Andretti is going as well as he expected.
“It has gone back and forth,” Kirkwood said. “There are times it has gone better than I expected and at times it has gone worse that I expected.
“We’ve had super good pace everywhere I’ve gone. Coming out of here with an average of ninth-place finish is not too bad at this place.
“We just need to finish Sundays off better. We’ve had the pace. We just need to finish.”
