Kyle Kirkwood makes feelings known about 'cat and mouse' fight with Alex Palou for IndyCar title

Andretti Global's Kyle Kirkwood has recently shared his take on the 2025 IndyCar championship fight with Alex Palou. Kirkwood and Palou are the only two drivers to amass Grand Prix wins in the first nine races of the ongoing campaign.

The reigning IndyCar champion, Alex Palou, has already put on board six Grand Prix wins, whereas Kyle Kirkwood has also managed to secure three victories. Palou's victories have come at St. Petersburg, Thermal Club, Alabama, Indianapolis (road-course), the Indy 500 and last week's XPEL Grand Prix at Road America.

Kirkwood, on his end, has triumphed at Long Beach, Detroit and St. Louis. In line with their battle for the title, the Andretti Global driver, via an interaction with Always Race Day, said:

"We are having a good championship run here. It's just unfortunate that Palou is doing just such a great job. End of the day, they are Honda wins, which is good for us, but we wanna take it to him in the championship, and it's been really hard to claw back at him, which we did for a couple of races, but he once again pulled away a little bit. So it's a little bit of cat and mouse with him." (1:30 onwards)

Alex Palou is leading the 2025 IndyCar championship with 386 points, whereas Kyle Kirkwood is in second place with 293. In third position is Arrow McLaren's star driver Pato O'Ward, who has so far managed to put on board 275 points.

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Kyle Kirkwood's take on P4 finish in XPEL Grand Prix at Road America

Kyle Kirkwood has been in consistent form during the 2025 IndyCar season. When he has not managed to secure victories, he has made sure that his outing ends around the top positions. This has played a key role in helping Kirkwood score decently throughout the first nine races.

In last week's XPEL Grand Prix at Road America, he started his outing from P3, and amid the chaos of the 55-lap tussle, he was able to come away with a solid P4 finish. The Grand Prix was won by Alex Palou, and he was followed into the podium places by Felix Rosenqvist and Santino Ferrucci.

In a post-race interaction, Kirkwood said (via Andretti Global's official website):

"That was a good result. I will definitely take fourth with the kind of performance that we had there. I mean, man, that was a crazy race. Especially since the first half of it was a split strategy."

Next up on the race calendar is the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio (July 6). Taking into consideration that Kyle Kirkwood is currently 93 points behind Palou, he needs an extremely solid outing in the upcoming race.