Kyle Kirkwood refuses to dwell on historic Long Beach win going into Alabama GP

Kyle Kirkwood is embracing a championship contender's mentality going into the Children's of Alabama Indy Grand Prix this weekend. The Andretti Global driver won the historic 50th edition of the Long Beach Grand Prix on April 13 but refuses to get carried away with that high.

Kirkwood's win at Long Beach was the third of his IndyCar career. He qualified on pole position at the iconic street circuit and held his nerve in the closing stages of the race to deny Alex Palou a third consecutive win this season.

Ahead of the ongoing race weekend at Barber, the No. 27 Andretti Global driver was asked what it would mean to him to get a second consecutive win after Long Beach.

"It'd be great," he replied via FrontStretch on YouTube [3:30 onwards]. "But we're kind of forgetting about Long Beach this time... you kind of have to in racing. You got 17 races, right? You can't dwell on one win. You got to keep going after multiple if you want to do well in the championship. So our goal this weekend is just to do it again, right? We're here to get points. We're here to go after a championship and that comes with getting Top 3s, and hopefully a win."

Kyle Kirkwood is currently second in the standings, 34 points behind championship leader and reigning champion Alex Palou. Andretti Global's car seems like a different beast this season, and Kirkwood is leading by example.

---

Kyle Kirkwood highlights key factor that will decide the race strategy for Alabama Indy GP

Kyle Kirkwood drives his No. 27 Honda at IndyCar's Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg - Source: Getty

Kyle Kirkwood spoke about the key factor that could decide the race strategy at the Alabama Indy GP on Sunday (May 4). The 2.38-mile Barber Motorsports Park circuit is a tricky one for drivers to maneuver. With undulations and elevation changes, the 16-turn circuit can lead to incidents between drivers that will bring out the caution and change the race strategy.

Kirkwood feels the cautions could be the deciding factor and not the new hybrid systems on the cars.

"I don't think the hybrid is gonna change the strategy. I think what will change strategy though, is the fact that we haven't had yellows. But we also said that at Nashville a couple of years ago, and I remember everybody's like, 'Oh, there's going to be a yellow-filled race', and it ended up having only one yellow. So it could be the opposite here where there's just a ton of yellows," he said in the aforementioned interview. [2:20 onwards].

Kyle Kirkwood had a decent running in practice one on Friday. He completed 21 laps in the session and his best lap time of 1:08.1510s was good enough to put his No. 27 Honda 11th-fastest among 27 drivers.