Kyle Kirkwood, Marcus Ericsson Hope to Fix Andretti’s Inconsistencies in 2026

The two Andretti Global drivers who return to their INDYCAR seats next season will spend this offseason evaluating a year that included battling inconsistency.

Kyle Kirkwood finished fourth in the standings and his three wins ranked second in the series behind champion Alex Palou’s eight wins. Kirkwood won on the street courses at Long Beach and Detroit as well as the World Wide Technology Raceway (Gateway) oval.

But after five top-five finishes in the first nine races, Kirkwood didn’t post a top-five finish in the final seven events. 

“We looked to be fighting for the championship, and a lot of good things were coming our way,” Kirkwood said. “But I would say that that kind of deteriorated as the season went on. It was up and down.”

Kirkwood and Marcus Ericsson (20th in the standings) return for Andretti next year. They will be joined by Will Power, who was ninth in points and replaces Colton Herta, who was sixth in the standings and will head to the Cadillac F1 team as a test driver and a likely Formula 2 ride.

“Anybody in [Herta’s] position, if given the opportunity, would always go and chase their dream, or else you’ll regret it for the rest of your life, right?”  Kirkwood said about Herta’s F1 aspirations.

“But it also opened up a door for someone like Will who has race wins — Indy 500 [win], championships — and the amount of poles that guy has allows someone with his pedigree, with his knowledge and his experience, to come in and maybe help shape our organization to a place that will be advantageous for all three drivers.”

The organization has also brought in former Team Penske executive Ron Ruzewski as chief performance officer. For Ericsson and Kirkwood, they are spending the offseason evaluating 2025 and looking at what needs to improve in 2026.

The permanent road courses and ovals seemed to be the biggest struggle.

“I don’t know where the pace has quite gone [on road courses], but that used to be something that Andretti was phenomenal at,” Kirkwood said. “I think over the past couple of years, it’s gone away a little bit. We’re really going to be honing in on that.”

Ericsson had a best finish of fifth all year, although he had a second-place finish at the Indy 500 wiped away by a technical infraction that relegated him to the rear of the field. He finished better than where he started in only three races during the season.

“I feel like we’ve had so many different things go wrong for us. It’s been technical issues, and then wrong side of strategy and then wrong tire at the wrong time,” Ericsson said. “But it’s quite clear, it comes down to race execution.

“We’ve just been really bad at execution in the races. [It was] not like a single thing that we always do wrong. It’s just like different things every race that we just end up missing out on.”

The former Formula 1 driver said the lack of execution was a mystery.

“We need to focus on for next year on how can we execute races better,” Ericsson said. “And that includes myself, of course. But it’s been a bit of a mystery because all my career, even back in my F1 days, my race craft and race execution was always my biggest strength, and the same in INDYCAR.

“So it’s very strange how we sort of have lost the plot there this year and just been really struggling.”

The team hopes to get a boost from Power and what he can pull from what worked well for him at Team Penske. 

Kirkwood laughed at the notion that people think he and Power might have a beef after Power ran into him during practice at Detroit.

“Him and I get along super well,” Kirkwood said. “We go and have dinners together. He’s actually one of the drivers that I get along with the most and I can resonate with the most.

“It will be great to have him on board to show us his discipline and what philosophy he has on what makes a fast race car. We’ll learn off him.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.