Kyle Kirkwood needs ‘miracles to have to happen’ to revive championship fight in Freedom 250

JEFFREY HRUNKA - INDYCAR CONTRIBUTOR

Casey Shepherd (Motorsports Today, 2026)

Kyle Kirkwood is in pursuit of his first championship, only sitting second in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES standings entering the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C. race weekend. The kicker is that he is over 100 points behind championship leader Alex Palou, who is poised to take his fifth championship in the last six years. 

Still, confidence to close that gap this weekend is at an all-time high.

“Our race pace has been phenomenal, especially on new street courses, and I think we're definitely in the hot seat for the team that is likely to beat. So we're excited for this one,” Kirkwood, driver of the No.27 Andretti Global Honda, said. “This would be the trifecta for us on new street courses, so we're very excited for it.” 

Although Kirkwood isn’t mathematically out of the championship fight, he’s going to need a significant amount of help. Specifically, he needs Alex Palou, driver of the No.10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, to make a mistake. 

The issue is Palou hasn’t made many of them. 

Last weekend, Palou slipped up in Top-12 qualifying at the Markham Street Circuit, tagging the wall before slamming into the barriers at Turn 10. It marked the first time he didn’t qualify inside the Top-10 since the championship final at Nashville Superspeedway in 2024, in which he qualified 24th.

Palou rallied back and finished fourth. Kirkwood's crucial mistake last weekend came in the race as he hit the inside barrier at Turn 3 while running third, sending him out of the race.

While it's a long shot, Palou can capture his fifth championship if he extends his lead over Kirkwood by 30 points for a 163-point gap. With only four opportunities left to close this gap, Kirkwood made it clear what he needed to do. Win.

“The new standard is you just win as much as you can, and you win the championship. So I mean, that's really what we've been doing all year long,” Kirkwood said. “Closing to the end of it, some miracles will have to happen for us to be back into the championship fight, and those miracles would be us winning everything from here on out.”

The benefit the American has is the unknown of the Freedom 250. With the weekend’s first practice session being nullified because of weather, teams only had the second practice session to set up their cars ahead of qualifying. Kirkwood’s approach started on his track walk yesterday, finding similarities to other tracks he can base his setup on.

“It's understanding the track...and trying to find a common corner at another racetrack that might be applicable to this place, then build our car around that,” Kirkwood said. “That's really the goal.” 

All he and several other drivers have to go off ahead of the weekend is simulation time, which isn't entirely accurate in its own right.

"The only thing that any of us drivers have had is maybe a DIL (simulation) day on a CAD model that isn't completely accurate, and it has no bumps. It has no different asphalts."

Kirkwood's championship resurgence starts on the streets of Washington, D.C., for the inaugural Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C. Fans can tune in to the action at 11:35 a.m. EST on FOX on Sunday, Aug. 23.