Andretti Global driver, Kyle Kirkwood, experienced “the lowest amount of grip” with the green walled Firestone tires during Practice 1 in Toronto.
Kyle Kirkwood was the overall fastest in the Practice 1 on the Streets of Toronto’s Exhibition Place. Scott McLaughlin and Alex Palou rounded out the overall Top 3.
Issues with the green walled tyres
The field had soft green walled Firestone tyres that “grained really, really bad.” With the graining and no support races, it was hard for drivers, including Kirkwood, to find grip in Toronto.
When asked about tire grip, Kirkwood answered, “Yeah, I mean, certainly a tough one because that’s probably the lowest amount of grip I’ve driven in IndyCar in a very long time.” The Andretti Global driver continued, That’s just due to the fact that we don’t have a bunch of support series here. We don’t have Indy [NXT] that are usually running on Firestone, helping build up the grip. We were sweeping in a sense for the rest of the session and for the rest of the weekend.”
“But overall pretty solid. I think everybody saw that alternate tyres looked like they grained really, really bad. That’s why you saw a lot of people going faster on greens. Interesting how that shakes out for the rest of the weekend”
Practice 1 saw hotter than normal track temperatures in Toronto, with the rest of the weekend set to cool down. When asked in a follow-up during the Post-Practice Press Conference if the tires would preform better, Kirkwood answered, “I’m not sure.”
“That’s a great question. Not sure why it was like that. We clearly had a very soft street course tire. Given the nature of that session where it was pretty low grip, maybe that just has something to do with it.“
“Nonetheless, it’s on our minds for the rest of the weekend and obviously for the race.”
A street comeback for Andretti Global
With Kirkwood winning the most street races this season and teammate Colton Herta in victory lane last year in Toronto, Andretti Global seem to have mastered the streets. However, with Palou dominance, an Andretti Global win might be more challenging
“I’d say there’s more uncertainty, for sure, which in some ways might be able to pull away a little bit of our confidence due to uncertainty. It’s important that things change up.”
“If you see some difference, you can only try and look at that as a positive and hope that your team as a whole can overcome these obstacles better, right? In some ways yes, in some ways no. It definitely is different than last year.”
