“Mental error” costs Kyle Kirkwood shot at Arlington IndyCar pole

Kyle Kirkwood took responsibility for a mental mistake that dashed a shot to claim pole for the inaugural Grand Prix of Arlington. 

The Florida native showcased his street prowess in Saturday morning’s practice session, pulling off the fastest lap of the weekend with a 1m33.1409s flyer around the 14-turn, 2.73-mile temporary circuit. And that had many marking him as the favorite to capture the top spot in qualifying. 

After setting the initial fast time on a set of Firestone’s harder primary (black sidewall) tires of 1m34.5205s during the Round of 12 portion of qualifying, there was a moment of concern as the lap also saw Kirkwood make slight contact with the wall with the left-rear of his #27 Andretti Global Honda.

Upon pitting so his crew could survey the significance of the damage, momentarily, he was sent back out on a set of softer alternate rubber and improved his time with a quick lap of 1m33.8868s. However, it proved to not be enough as he fell to seventh, one spot short of the transfer spot into the Fast Six by 0.0415s to his teammate Marcus Ericsson, who went on to take his first career IndyCar pole.

“That was a brush on prime tires and it had no damage to the car,” Kirkwood said, when asked by FOX Sports if the incident caused damage. 

“To be honest, between that, we had a little hiccup on pit lane. I had just forgotten which lap we needed to do our (flying) lap on. For some reason, I had it embedded in my mind, it’s lap two, it’s lap two, but we had three laps of fuel in the car and I had a big mistake down in Turn 10 and still pit for some reason. 

“It was a bit of a messy run, no doubt, but this JM Bullion (Honda) is fast and I’m very disappointed. That one is on me. I’d have to say our prime tire pace is incredible, which is a very good sign for tomorrow’s race. If I had new primes right now in qualifying, I probably would have used those. 

“It’s very unfortunate because I thought this was going to be, it’s never easy getting a pole in qualifying in IndyCar racing, but I thought this was going to be one of the easier ones and quite honestly, I just made a massive mental error.”

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– The Motorsport.com Team

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