THERMAL, Calif. — Kyle Kirkwood was cruising to a fourth-place finish in Sunday’s (March 23) race at The Thermal Club.
But in the closing laps of the second NTT IndyCar Series race of the year, the Andretti Global driver dropped like an anchor, taking the checkered flag in eighth.
“Oh, we just got extreme tired deg [degradation], and it was from a tire that you wouldn’t expect it to happen from,” Kirkwood told Frontstretch. “So I’m very disappointed in that.”
Kirkwood started the race in eighth, and in the caution-free event, he had his team had worked hard to gain track position on a track where passing zones were limited.
“There was no indicator in the previous three stints [of the tires],” Kirkwood said. “We ran very good, very clean, very fast the entire previous three stints, and then on the last stint, one of our tires just decided to go off a cliff only six or seven laps into it. So, disappointing.”
Had Kirkwood held where he’d been running, he would’ve started the young season with consecutive top fives after finishing fifth at St. Petersburg in the season opener. In fact, it would’ve marked a third consecutive top five for Kirkwood, going back to the 2024 season finale at Nashville Superspeedway. Kirkwood would’ve left Thermal third in points.
FRO says, 'I'll take that.'
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) March 23, 2025
An overtake with a few laps remaining for P5.
📺: #ThermalGP on FOX pic.twitter.com/5s551PrLT0
Still, Kirkwood was aware of the fact that the faulty tire could’ve led to a much-worse result.
“That’s part of it though,” Kirkwood said. “Sometimes, things like that happen, and that’s motor racing. But I mean, it’s better than ending up in the wall because of something.
“So I mean, we’ll take an eighth place. [we] only only lost four positions because of it. [It] sucks. Wish we had another top five, but, yeah, eighth place is not bad nonetheless in IndyCar.”
Kirkwood does leave Thermal with four straight top 10s going back to last season. He’s currently sixth in points, 48 markers out of first.
Sunday at Thermal was demanding for all the drivers, as not only was there no downtime in the first caution-free race since 2020, but the heat soared as well. Temperatures rose to over 90 degrees.
“It’s hot, yeah,” Kirkwood said. “No cautions. I mean, to be honest, because of how much deg and how slow the pace was because of the heat, it wasn’t that physical. It was kind of light, greasy. It was just the heat that really did anything to be honest.
“Any time it’s 90 degrees ambient, you know it’s going to be 100-110-plus [degrees] inside the cockpit. So an hour and 45 [minutes] of grueling heat while you’re trying to constantly turn around this place is not easy.”
When Frontstretch asked Kirkwood if he wanted to keep having points races at Thermal in the future, he said that he would let us know after this weekend. Frontstretch asked Kirkwood the same question after Sunday’s race, and the Florida native had a one-word response.
“No,” Kirkwood said.
Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020.
Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.