Foyt wants Leaders Circle, $1 million, can Kyle Kirkwood deliver before move to Andretti?

Kyle Kirkwood has heard the calls for Larry Foyt and A.J. Foyt Racing to bench the IndyCar rookie over the final three races in hopes someone with more experience might be able to save the No. 14 Chevy’s Leaders Circle hopes and the $1 million it brings. Every time Kirkwood crashes – as on the Streets of Nashville, where he turned a potential top-5 into 19^th with heavy damage – he sees the tweets calling him a disappointment.

It’s 2022, and for the 23-year-old, social media is something he just can’t avoid. To say he ignores it would be too rosy a spin, but the 2021 Indy Lights champ is doing his best not to let the criticism get him too down, either. Should he record a top-10, or even a top-5, Saturday at WWT Raceway – his professed goal at the track where last year’s driver of the No. 14, Sebastien Bourdais, took 5^th – it all might make that a little sweeter, though.

“It’s certainly been something new to deal with this year, because there is this mental aspect to it all, like, ‘Man, do people really think this about me?’" Kirkwood told IndyStar this week in an exclusive interview. "You have to go back to your instincts and tell yourself, ‘Listen, there’s a reason why you’ve gotten here and a reason why you’ve done so well the last 4-5 years. Don’t let anyone on social media take that away from you.’”

At the same time, Kirkwood’s not about to shy away from the idea that his rookie campaign has been underwhelming coming off five junior series championships since 2017. Some of that can be tied back to Foyt’s road course package that the young driver said is still a work-in-progress. Other races (Texas and Iowa Race No. 2) have seen Kirkwood as an unfortunate passenger in situations where he was forced up into the marbles on ovals, lost traction and sailed into the wall.

And then, there are races where, as a rookie, he’s displayed he’s still learning how to get the most out of fresh alternate tires (day-ending spins at Detroit and Mid-Ohio) or come out on the wrong end of an aggressive move that looked good at the time. More than a week after such a shortcoming in Nashville, that decision to try to dive inside on fellow rookie David Malukas in Turn 9 while battling for 7^th-place on Lap 65 is still fresh.

“I felt like we were racing for a podium. We had a amazing car in the race,” Kirkwood said. “Sometimes, when you’re stuck mid-pack and you have a car you could go win with, you’re going to push everything you have out of it, and there’s just been too many instances like that that have caught us out.

“I’d run down (Malukas) from 1 second back over that lap, and I knew I needed to get by him quickly because I had Grosjean on my gearbox. David was on the (Push-to-Pass) the entire straight, so I assumed he saw me coming and realized I’d be trying to pass him or at least know I was coming. At the time, I shouldn’t have relied on him knowing I was coming, but hindsight’s 20/20.”

Team president Larry Foyt told IndyStar he had a productive conversation with Kirkwood post-race to try to understand his young driver’s thinking. It wasn’t so much a scolding as trying to get a better grip on what Kirkwood was seeing in the car to help coach him through how to deal with it in the future.

“I do think that was a move that could’ve been timed a little differently. He told me afterward, ‘Yeah, I made that on Pagenaud, and it worked well’, but I had to remind (Kyle), ‘Well, Pagenaud isn’t a rookie. David’s probably already looking at the corner, and as a rookie, maybe not expecting you to throw it in there,’” Foyt said. “It’s just one of those things. That’s how you learn, and when you have a rookie, some accidents are going to happen.

“Kyle’s a super confident driver coming out of winning championships all the way up and winning races. That’s why we wanted to hire him, but sometimes in IndyCar, you have to show some restraint. You see a lot of crashes in IndyCar right now because it can be hard to pass and everyone’s very aggressive, and you want your driver to be aggressive too, but sometimes you have to learn that line of what’s too aggressive.”

Even with just three races left together – with Kirkwood is moving to the No. 27 Honda at Andretti Autosport – there’s a sense of urgency from Foyt that Nashville be the No. 14’s final letdown of the year, for multiple reasons.

For one, the team started 2022 running three full-time programs propped up by major primary sponsor ROKiT, the company that was heavily featured on Bourdais’ No. 14 a year ago. This year, not only did they return on the No. 14, but also helped bring life to the No. 11 split by Tatiana Calderon (road and street courses) and JR Hildebrand (ovals). But when ROKiT’s checks stopped, Foyt ultimately had no choice but to bench the No. 11 a month ago. Though there had once been hope for the car to return at Portland, according to Foyt, that plan now seems increasingly unlikely.

So instead, Kirkwood’s team has run Sexton Properties for much of the rest of the year and Saturday will feature Bommarito Automotive Group. Kirkwood finishing the season was never in question, but three severely damaged cars over four weekends have not only been expensive for a team with limited funds, but taxing, too.

“The guys were pretty beat up after Nashville, because we felt pretty under control all weekend and knew we had a good car,” Foyt said. “It was just a shame, because at this time in the year, everyone’s really tired, and we’ve had such a long stretch on the road, and when you’re fixing the car a lot, it really wears on the guys.

“They know what the job is, but you’re excited to see the car up front, and you just want to get that result.”

Semi-related is A.J. Foyt Racing’s quest for at least one spot in IndyCar’s Leaders Circle payout program for 2023. Though long shrouded in secrecy due to series officials’ unwillingness in recent years to explain how its teams are paid out outside of the Indy 500, it’s generally believed the structure remains unchanged. With one caveat, the top-22 programs in entrant points lock in a guaranteed roughly $1 million in payouts in 2023.

In 18^th at the moment, it’s pretty safe to say Meyer Shank Racing’s Helio Castroneves (224 points) is locked-in with three races to go. Those immediately behind him (Dale Coyne Racing’s Takuma Sato, 208 points and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Jack Harvey, 200 points) are almost certainly set, too. Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Callum Ilott sits 21^st (190 points), followed by Chip Ganassi Racing’s Jimmie Johnson – who by virtue of being the team’s fourth entry, is believed not to be in the running for a payout spot.

But should it come down to the top-22 eligible full-time programs, fellow rookie Devlin DeFrancesco (who, though he’s fourth at Andretti Autosport, has been grandfathered into the system for running four full-time for so long) sits in the final spot (159 points) with a 15-point cushion on Kirkwood. Even farther back sits Kirkwood’s Foyt teammate Dalton Kellett, last among full-time entries with 51 points to make up just to reach Kirkwood.

Though Kirkwood would in no way benefit from snagging that Leaders Circle spot for his soon to be former team, you can tell there’s a sense of duty inside the first-year driver to help give something back to the crew that’s stuck with him and, at times, given him a notably fast race car to fight with. Three times, the No. 14 Chevy has advanced into the Fast 12 in qualifying.

“It would be so cool to win with this team and, at least, do the best I possibly can with them and show what they’re capable of,” Kirkwood said. “I think people in the paddock can see what we’re doing with this team, but it doesn’t show up in the results. I’ve seen people on social media say the last few months that I’m checked out and just focused on next year, that I’m just looking at this year as a learning experience before I go to Andretti to do super well, and that’s just not the case."

And so, at a track where passing is as tough as any track on the calendar, where he’ll roll off third-to-last for qualifying – a less-than-ideal spot on ovals – Kirkwood hopes he can finally find that sweet spot in merging his sense of urgency and longing to prop up his team’s unwavering commitment to his learning curve with a top-10 while also understanding that, say, 14^th is far better than 25^th and saddling the team with more lengthy, expensive repairs.

As Foyt said this week, “We definitely have to finish. There’s just been too many DNFs this year, and that’s hurt. It would be good to finish.”

Added Kirkwood: “This was always how it was in my career. I’ve always had to pay for my own crash damage, so I’ve had to always push very hard, but also not mess up because I couldn’t pay for that. But this type of season is something I’ve never been a part of before. I’d never had any major hiccups, and I’ve come to the place I’ve always wanted to be. Having all these DNFs is super unfortunate, but we’ve kept persevering and wanting to get more because that’s what we deserve.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Can Kyle Kirkwood deliver Foyt $1 million, Leaders Circle spot