The agitation that the Indianapolis 500 arouses each year is slowly giving way to championship news, which is gaining prominence again this weekend with the Detroit Grand Prix. But even beyond what is expected in the next four months, some teams have already begun to outline their situation for 2023. Anticipating events, Andretti Autosport has been the first to make a move to confirm this Wednesday to Kyle Kirkwood in his line-up for next season in place of the outgoing Alexander Rossi.
The 23-year-old American driver is the reigning Indy Lights champion, having equaled the category’s win record and swept every American junior category. Kirkwood is in the midst of his first IndyCar season with AJ Foyt Racingone of the most modest teams on the grid, where it occupies 21st position overall after six races, having achieved a top 10 finish at the Long Beach Grand Prix and finish the Indy 500 as the second best rookie in 17th position. In the absence of contrasting his evolution during the rest of the year, his great talent gives him an opportunity that he could have received this past fall.
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In the midst of the weeks in which Michael Andretti negotiated the purchase of Sauber Motorsports to compete in Formula 1, Kirkwood was unofficially appointed to fill the vacancy of a Colton Herta that he would have set course for the World Cup if the operation went ahead, and he even carried out a couple of tests with his car. Although the plan did not work out, Andretti did not want to let escape the young talent that had dominated Indy Lights in one of his cars, and has kept a preferential right on his services as part of the one-year contract he signed with Foyt.
Kirkwood will drive next year the #27 car, after formalizing in the same announcement that Alexander Rossi will not continue in the team. There is not and will not be much uncertainty about his next destination, since everything indicates that the “special announcement of a team” that will take place in Detroit this Friday will serve to confirm that the former winner of the Indy 500 will stop at McLaren SP, in a third vehicle that the Anglo-American team will field full-time next year alongside newly renewed Pato O’Ward and (presumably) Felix Rosenqvist.
Having not long ago been the big star of Andretti, immersed in title fights in which he finished runner-up in 2018 and third in 2019, Rossi’s results have suffered noticeably in recent seasons. The Californian is currently on a 43-race winless streak since his last win at Road America 2019. In that span, he has only finished on the podium eight times, and has only done so once in the last 23 events. . The arrival of the Aeroscreen greatly affected his riding style, which added to a series of own mistakes, unfortunate circumstances, mechanical problems and multiple losses of position in the pits. He currently sits eleventh in the table after his fifth-place finish at the Indy 500.
Rossi had not missed an opportunity in these years of show their disagreement with their situation, sometimes quite publicly and especially after the problems in the pits, which increased the run-run about his future at the end of his contract this year. The announcement of Rossi’s departure, which could be brought forward to today or this Thursday, will mean the beginning of the end of a seven-year stint with the team where he made his IndyCar debut in 2016, at that time in a fourth seat of Andretti Autosport next to Bryan Herta Autosport that represented in practice the absorption of this team. The rest is history, and Kirkwood will have some very big shoes to fill.
Photos: IndyCar Media