Can the CFP selection committee be fixed … or replaced? Let's dive into the data
Eighteen months from the start of the 2026 College Football Playoff, the event has no format, and the people in charge of putting one together are hitting the reset button on the topic.
That's a reset, not quite a restart. Everybody involved seems keen on the idea of expanding the 12-team model that will be used this season, which itself features a tweak on the inaugural 12-team Playoff's seeding structure. Sixteen teams is the most likely number, because bigger is the easiest thing to agree upon. Though it should be noted: Everything is subject to change right now.
Advertisement
How to pick teams and fill the bracket is the real sticking point of the moment.
'I think what we need to do, from our perspective, is we need to take a step back,' Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork said during a news conference with media last week in Columbus. 'There's so much work that has to be done. We believe in what we believe in. We're willing to listen, and I think that's a position that we have to take, but playing it out in public and staking claim, what good does that do?'
A Big Ten-backed plan to populate the bracket with mostly automatic qualifiers from the power conferences, determined by league standings and play-in games, has been discussed for more than a year, but now there is renewed interest within the SEC in a format heavy on at-large bids. The SEC's recent pivot away from AQs at its annual spring meetings caught some in the Big Ten off guard.
'One week it was 4-4-2-2-1,' Bjork said, referencing the distribution of automatic bids among the Power 4 leagues in the Big Ten's preferred expansion model. 'That had a lot of traction that was out publicly, and then the next week, it was 5+11, but have we accomplished anything yet? No. So let's play it out where it should be played out in these conversations, where the authority lies.'
The authority lies with the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame's athletic director, who make up the CFP management committee. More precisely, the power lies with the SEC and Big Ten. Regardless, the larger group will gather in Asheville, N.C., this week for its fourth in-person meeting since the end of last season to talk about the not-so-distant future of the College Football Playoff.
The focus will be on the selection process, which everybody seems to take issue with in some form or another, while politely acknowledging that selection committee members are making a good-faith effort to do a difficult job the best they can.
Advertisement
'I think anything we can do to make the postseason more objective and less subjective is going to be better,' Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin said at SEC meetings in Destin, Fla. 'Whether you could do that some other way than automatics? I don't know, but I think that's the goal.'
Not surprisingly, every conference commissioner looked at the selection committee rankings last year and thought their league's teams should be ranked higher. In the SEC in particular, leaders have asked questions about whether the committee is properly weighing strength of schedule.
'We learned something the first time through (the 12-team playoff),' SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said. 'And that raises the need for deeper analysis and understanding. If we're gonna just incentivize wins, playing fewer winning teams can get you to more wins. I don't think that's great for football.'
So how to 'fix' the selection process?
The possibilities include:
The SEC concluded its meetings by handing out a seven-page document, filled with charts and graphs to visualize various popular advanced metrics used to evaluate and rank college football teams. The conclusion, according to the SEC, was that the depth of quality in the conference has been unmatched over the past decade: In general, SEC teams were facing the toughest competition.
Among the handful of rating systems cited was SP+, a forward-looking measurement that evaluates teams on a play-by-play basis, sprinkling in a program's recent history and recruiting rankings.
The irony of the SEC using average SP+ rating over the last 10 years to indirectly make the argument that its teams were given short shrift by the selection committee last season is that the rating's creator disagrees with the conference's premise.
'It was definitely conflicting hearing the SEC refer to me as the one of the reasons why it should get more Playoff teams when I say the opposite,' said Bill Connelly, who created SP+ 17 years ago and started working for ESPN in 2019.
Advertisement
Connelly has a derivative of SP+ that he says more accurately equates to selecting Playoff teams. His resume ranking includes raw results of games — i.e., wins and losses — which SP+ does not.
While the final SP+ ratings of 2024 placed Mississippi at No. 2 and Alabama at No. 4 — neither made the CFP field — the SP+ resume rankings on selection Sunday were not quite so bullish. Alabama was ninth, good enough to squeeze into the field over SMU using just those numbers; the committee chose the Mustangs over the Crimson Tide after SMU lost the ACC Championship Game to Clemson on a last-second field goal. But even using the resume ratings, Ole Miss would have missed the 12-team field at No. 11, squeezed out by conference champions Clemson and Arizona State of the Big 12.
CFP selection committee members do not lack statistics to help them evaluate teams. The 13 committee members receive a large binder packed with information on each FBS team, provided by SportSource Analytics. Offensive numbers. Defensive numbers. Strength of schedule. It's a lot. Maybe too much?
Connelly, like many media members, has taken part in the annual mock selection sessions run by the CFP to provide a window into its process. He said the side-by-side comparisons of teams in the CFP binders, with green shading showing which team has the advantage in each category and red shading highlighting deficiencies, is probably not the best use of visualization. Not all components of performance are created equal.
'It can be a useful exercise, but it's definitely worse than using good advanced stats,' Connelly said.
Consolidation could help. But Connelly said even he wouldn't recommend using just one rating system but rather a combination of several.
Brian Fremeau, whose FEI rating system has been ranking college football teams since 2006, echoed Connelly's sentiment. Even he doesn't take his own numbers as the last word.
Advertisement
'There's definitely an assortment of (rating systems) that I'd bring to the table, not a single one,' said Fremeau, whose ratings use possession-level data to evaluate teams. 'I believe there's a single data source that the committee uses, and I don't say this as distrust of them or that kind of source, but I actually think a variety of sources would be just a better approach. Because one source, and I'll say this about my own stuff, doesn't tell the whole story.'
The NCAA men's college basketball committee has leaned into a more metrics-based approach in recent years, with the NET rating fueling a quad system to evaluate wins and losses, and committee members regularly citing the popular KenPom.com efficiency ratings.
Connelly cautioned that this type of a system wouldn't translate well to football, where teams play only 12 regular-season games, compared to 30-something in basketball. Not enough data points.
The CFP's staff has been evaluating the data provided to the selection committee and expects to present some ideas to the managers this week. Ultimately, though, the commissioners need to decide what they want to emphasize.
Once upon a time, the Bowl Championship Series used a compilation of computer ratings and human polls to determine which two teams would play for the national title. The formula underwent near-constant tweaks, eventually to a point where human polls were heavily weighted and the computer ratings acted almost as a tiebreaker.
'The reason why everybody thought the committee was a good idea is because everybody hated the BCS formula,' Connelly said. 'The reason everybody hated the BCS formula is because it could only pick two teams. If you're picking 16 now, or 11 at-large, whatever we end up getting here, that formula, that exact kind of formula approach where you mix subjective and objective, would work fine.'
Last year, a simulated BCS formula would have produced a very similar set of rankings to the selection committee, with the exact same teams ranked in the top 16 and few differences in the order.
Here it is, what we've been waiting for — the season-ending simulated #BCS rankings. How will the @CFBPlayoff rankings compare? pic.twitter.com/tHvmrDOEVK
— BCSKnowHow.com (@BCSKnowHow) December 8, 2024
Fremeau said he wouldn't want the CFP selection process to be devoid of human input. The margin between teams is often so slim it requires a well-informed panel to make a decision.
'I wouldn't want people who don't understand the data at all,' he said. 'I don't think they should be bound by: The number said this, and therefore it's the only thing.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Car and Driver
9 minutes ago
- Car and Driver
Project Pinto: The Joy, Sorrow, and Work of Building a Race Car
From the March 1978 issue of Car and Driver. Once again the intrepid editors of Car and Driver have thrust their necks into the thick of the Goodrich Radial Challenge, which, for all of you who came in late, is a road-racing series for small sedans sanctioned by the International Motor Sports Association. Four races were entered, two poles were captured, and one winner's circle was invaded. So much for what we did on our summer vacation. Our car was a Ford Pinto, and the win was the first victory for a Pinto in two years of Goodrich racing. But the really fascinating part—to us, at least—is that the season's results strongly support a hunch we've been kicking around the office for years. We reckon that motor racing is almost entirely an intellectual game. Brains are trump. Bullfighter-brave drivers will give the car a good run and Onassis budgets take the worry out of blown engines, but it is thoughtful selection and logical preparation of the car in the first place that wins races. There are no tricks and no short cuts. It's common sense all the way. At least, that's what we thought. And the Pinto project—winning in its second appearance, long after most of the serious racers had dismissed Ford's subcompact as a lost cause—rather grandly supports our theory. Every racing project has to start with fundamentals. You must have a thorough understanding of the rules and complete specifications for all the eligible cars. It would be easy to lapse into "The Anatomy of a Winning Pinto" at this point—everything from valve-seat angles to camber settings—but frankly, it would be pretty dull. The car, in fact, is completely conventional. It even scored its one victory (at Charlotte Motor Speedway) using its original hydraulic valve lifters. Any number of competent mechanics would have made the same modifications we did and, if they were thorough, probably would have ended up with the same results. So the real story is not in the car itself but in our approach to it: Why we chose a Pinto and how we knew what to do with it. Every racing project has to start with fundamentals. You must have a thorough understanding of the rules and complete specifications for all the eligible cars. Ideally, you would also have first-hand and quantitative observations of the cars that you'll have to beat: how fast they are, where are they fast (corners, straights, or under braking), and how close are they to the limits of their development. You have to know all of this before you can choose the right car. And the right car is absolutely essential if you want to win. The Top Cars: BMW 2002 and AMC Gremlin (Really) We went into the 1974 Goodrich series with an excellent backlog of information. Car and Driver's Mazda Wankel race car had been a first-class observation platform during the 1973 races. We had been able to run with the leaders in every race and could compare their strengths and weaknesses to a car we knew. Apart from the Mazda (which IMSA subsequently hobbled with a rules change), there were only two other competitive cars in the series: the AMC Gremlin and the BMW 2002. The Gremlin is an odd duck. It's really a big car made compact by chopping out about a third of the body. But it retains the control-arm front suspension, huge brakes, and six-inch-wide wheels of the big American Motors models, not to mention the 232-cubic-inch six-cylinder engine. Next to the Mazda, it was the fastest car on the straightaways and we considered it the one to beat. But how do you recognize the third-best car? Durability is the most important factor—you have to finish to win. Speed is next, then handling, and finally brakes. Ties are broken by picking the least costly alternative. The BMW ranked a close second. Its 2.0-liter engine is very powerful for its size, enabling the 2300-pound sedan to keep up with the 2700-pound Gremlins in acceleration, losing out only in top speed on long straights like those at Road Atlanta and Daytona. Handling and braking are about on a par with the Gremlins and better than you would expect, considering the BMW's MacPherson front suspension and rather small brakes. This can probably be attributed to the endless development work done by Miller & Norburn, the leading BMW team. And it would further suggest that these cars are nearing the limit of their potential. At this point, a right-thinking racer should check the price difference between American Motors and (gasp!) BMW replacement parts, then slide himself into a Gremlin. If the point of the exercise were simply to win races, that's what we would have done. But we had a theory: that a logical and thoughtful approach applied to a lesser car could knock off the heavies. The only way to find out was to try. Why We Picked the Third-Best Car The search began for the third-best car. (We weren't willing to push our theory too far. Fourth or fifth best makes the job just a little too hard.) But how do you recognize the third-best car? Everyone has their own theories on that; this is ours. Durability is the most important factor—you have to finish to win. Speed is next, then handling and finally brakes. Ties are broken by picking the least costly alternative. Car and Driver While durability is most important, it is also the hardest to predict. You can examine the finishing records of various makes of cars for a clue, but usually you find only a reflection of how well they are prepared. And of course there can be exceptions. If there is a pattern to the failures—the crankshafts always break or the transmissions always fail—you can pinpoint a problem. But usually the failures are random, and you have to assume that you'll spot weak areas during preparation. There are two kinds of speed, and the importance of each depends upon the type of tracks on which you'll be racing. At Daytona and Talladega, top speed is critical, and it depends entirely upon horsepower and aerodynamic drag. Since the principal component of drag is frontal area (roughly the width multiplied by the height of the car), hp-to-frontal area ratios are good indications of performance. At all the other tracks, acceleration is more important. A comparison of horsepower to weight tells the story here; ties are decided by the car with the closest spacing in the transmission ratios and the widest choice of axle gears. The value of handling once again depends on the track, ranging from being of relatively minor importance at Daytona and Talladega to being a critical factor at tight tracks such as Lime Rock and Mid-Ohio. In fact, cornering capability is more important than power at Lime Rock. Handling can generally be predicted from the following parameters, listed in order of importance: suspension type (unequal-length control arms are better than MacPherson struts), wheel width, track width, and car height. The more of these items that are relatively favorable, the better the car will handle. The importance of brakes increases on tracks with long straights followed by tight turns, but only in cases where brakes don't have enough capacity to last through the race do they become truly critical. When you have the freedom to substitute racing linings for the stock equipment (which you do in the Goodrich series), brake capacity depends almost entirely upon the weight of the car and size of the brakes. Under those circumstances, almost all of the eligible cars have adequate brakes, the Mazda RX-2 being the chief exception. Since speed depends upon horsepower, there comes a point at which you have to get down to numbers. With all of these car-evaluation parameters in mind, it's time to take a look at the tracks. The Goodrich series includes eight to 10 races, only three of which are on the superspeedways. So acceleration and handling are the most important qualities because they will see you through the conventional road courses in the best fashion. But the three superspeedway races depend almost entirely upon top speed and nothing else, so you can't afford to overlook this aspect. The Competitive Equation Since speed depends upon horsepower, there comes a point at which you have to get down to numbers. We knew the Wankel Racer produced 218 horsepower on the dyno, weighed 2350 pounds, and had a frontal area of 3400 square inches. Assuming that the Gremlins and BMWs were down to minimum weight and calculating their frontal areas from the specifications, we estimated their power-to-weight and power-to-frontal-area ratios relative to the Mazda based on their comparative speeds on the track. Solving the equation for horsepower, we concluded that the Gremlins had about 215 hp and the BMWs about 185, and this seemed within their capabilities. (Horsepower numbers have to be viewed with a great deal of caution. Some dynos—and some dyno operators—are optimistic; others are pessimistic. If you don't know the predilections of each, you can be seriously misled by their test results.) Setting the Gremlin's power-to-weight and power-to-frontal-area as a target, it was then possible to check out all of the other eligible cars by simply substituting their weights and frontal areas and solving the equation for horsepower necessary to match the Gremlin's speed. That left the key question: Could the engines of the cars in question produce the required horsepower? The power-to-frontal-area equation eliminates all of the small-engine cars right off the bat. We were particularly interested in the Toyota Corolla because of its 1850-pound minimum weight, but its frontal area turns out to be only 15 percent smaller than the Gremlin's and therefore would need about 180 horsepower to be competitive on long tracks. That would never happen with a 1.6-liter engine set up according to IMSA rules. The Honda Civic, with roughly the same frontal area, would be even worse off with only a 1237-cc engine. Car and Driver So the search for the third-best car was confined to those with engines of at least 2.0 liters, and it narrowed down to the Toyota Celica, the Mercury Capri 2000, and the Ford Pinto with either the 2.0-liter or new 2.3-liter engine. The Datsun 610 had previously been rejected because its 4.5-inch wheels are too narrow to work well with wide Goodrich Radial T/A tires, and the 2.0-liter Dodge Colt will not be approved by IMSA as long as it is only imported with an automatic transmission. Further calculations eliminated the 2.0-liter Pinto. IMSA assigned it a minimum weight of 2100 pounds and specified an additional 200 pounds if the 2.3-liter engine was used. The 15 percent displacement increase of the 2.3 engine more than outweighed the 9.5 percent weight increase. Further, since frontal area remains the same, the larger engine would have a much better shot at the superspeedways. Handling shot down the Toyota Celica. It's a narrow-track, MacPherson-suspension car and much too nose-heavy in street form. And IMSA's preparation rules don't allow enough latitude to fix its basic problems. Also, the engine was a complete unknown, and performance parts are rare. We were attracted to the Capri primarily because of its fine aerodynamics. Its smaller frontal area would require about 15 less horsepower than the Pinto for the same top speed, and its uncommonly slippery shape would help even more. It was, however, 100 pounds heavier than the Pinto with the same 2.0-liter engine, its track was two inches narrower in front and three inches narrower in back and, finally, it had a MacPherson front suspension. All of this was tempered by the fact that a street Capri handles better than the stock versions of most of the cars it would race against and therefore wouldn't need as much improvement to be competitive. We try to benefit from our own experience. When we find products or suppliers that do the job, we stick with them. At this point, neither the Pinto nor the Capri had a firm advantage. The Pinto promised high aerodynamic drag (due to its width and poor shape), excellent handling potential (control-arm front suspension, wide track, and low car), and a large engine. The Capri offered low drag and moderately good handling. It was the 2.3-liter engine that finally tipped the scale in favor of the Pinto. The 2.0-liter Pinto/Capri engine, on the other hand, had been around long enough so that all of the race shops had experience with it. And they all said the same thing: The intake ports are shaped wrong, severely limiting its potential for racing. At this point, nothing was known about Ford's new 2.3 engine except that it was the first U.S. engine to be produced with all metric dimensions—which hardly counts when the starter waves the green flag. So we bought a cylinder head and shipped it off to Doug Fraser Racing Engines in Marblehead, Massachusetts, for a candid opinion. Fraser specializes in Formula Fords but has broad four-cylinder experience including 2.0-liter Pinto, Colt, and BMW engines built to IMSA specifications. We were also familiar enough with his work to know that his engines were durable and his horsepower quotes quite conservative. Fraser pronounced the 2.3-liter ports substantially better than those of the 2.0 and predicted that the 2.3 would not only make more power than the 2.0 but would produce more power per cubic inch as well. At the same time, he was pessimistic about equaling the output of the 2.0-liter BMW, which has excellent ports. But with enough work, he thought the big Ford could come close. Adding up the Pinto's advantages and disadvantages, we could predict with fair accuracy its performance on various tracks. Its high drag and shortage of horsepower would hold it back on the superspeedways, but on short tracks its excellent chassis would probably compensate for any lack of power. Our Car This was as far as the project could go on a slide rule, so we went out and bought a solid 30,000-mile 1972 Pinto two-door. A new car would have been an easier way to go—there are no hidden cracks in the unit-body and no worn parts to rebuild—but the 1974 Pinto is a substantially heavier car, and we could see no way to trim the weight down to the 2300-pound IMSA minimum. The job of converting a street car into a racing car is time-consuming, but it's not particularly complicated. Making the car fast is a straightforward application of physics. The engines were farmed out to Doug Fraser, since professional engine builders usually save you money in the long run. You need good engines if you want to win, and good engines are the products of machine shops, airflow benches, and dynamometers. Not many amateur racers have this kind of equipment in their garages—or, for that matter, have enough time to build engines and keep their cars in first-class shape too. So we concentrated our efforts on the car, pausing occasionally to encourage Fraser when the horsepower was elusive and to threaten him when he was late. His plan was to build the first engine according to the dictates of his own experience, using whatever special parts (pistons, camshafts, valves, springs, etc.) could be obtained in time to meet our deadline. The second engine, to be available later in the season, was to be the product of much camshaft and cylinder-head development and would —hopefully—produce more power. By having engines built outside, we were free to concentrate on the chassis. Since this figured to be the Pinto's only strong point, we wanted to optimize every detail right from the start. And the only way to have complete control, to make sure no shortcuts were taken, was to do the work in our own shop. Fortunately, C/D is equipped to do this. When it comes to building racing cars, there are a very few key guidelines to follow, and if they are kept firmly in mind, the car will almost always turn out well. The most important is safety. The car has to be structurally strong to prevent breakage and it has to be reinforced to protect the driver in case of a crash. Like most of the other construction guidelines, safety has side benefits that show up in performance. If a car is structurally strong, it will also be rigid. And a rigid car will be predictable to its driver and respond to fine tuning adjustments of the brakes and suspension. The main source of rigidity is the tubular-steel roll cage. It not only protects the driver but stiffens the car as well. To do this properly, it must tie into any suspension mounting points that are of questionable rigidity. Finding them is pure educated guesswork. Usually you tie into as many as you can reach and gusset the ones you can't, all the while trying to add the least weight. There are no textbooks for guidance, so we brazed up a scale model of the roll cage using straight sections of stiff wire. This proved to be only a rough aid, since it is impossible to simulate the structure of the car to which the cage will be attached. The job of stiffening the car is simpler in the Goodrich series because the rules specify street radial tires, which don't generate the cornering forces of racing tires and therefore don't load the chassis as much. When we rubbed a hole in the oil pan during the car's third race (at Lime Rock), we knew how low is too low. Next in importance to a rigid, safe car is—in the interest of both handling and aerodynamics—a low car. For handling, the important thing is to have the weight (center of gravity) low. This can be achieved in part by lowering the body/chassis unit as far as possible on the suspension, which obviously lowers every single pound in the car. But you can also lower the center of gravity by mounting various components (the seat, fuel cell, oil cooler, and other movables) as low in the car as possible. To reduce aerodynamic drag, you want to minimize the space for air to flow under the car. A low car is the most direct way of doing so—but there is a limit. If you go too far, you'll either bottom out the suspension or scrape something off the underside. The only way to know is try and see what happens. With the Pinto at IMSA's minimum height (six inches from the ground to the center of the rocker panel) we rubbed a hole in the oil pan during the car's third race (at Lime Rock). Now we know how low is too low. The next item is to make sure that all moving parts travel in exactly the paths you intend with no interferences. This applies mainly to the suspension. We favor hard bushings instead of rubber in all of the suspension pivots. It's also important to make sure the shocks don't bottom out, the ball joints aren't over-angled, and the brake hoses are neither pulled tight nor pinched as the suspension moves through its travel. It's also a good idea to build in extra capacity in those areas where there is no serious penalty for doing so: Overdesign the cooling system (our Pinto has a Corvette aluminum radiator); use the largest brake ducts that will fit, and master cylinders with ample reservoirs; build in two electric fuel pumps with a large-diameter line to the carburetor; choose oversize filters where possible; and use heavy electrical wiring and high-quality bolts, clamps, and fasteners. The car may turn out somewhat heavier, but you won't have to waste time reworking systems that prove to be inadequate during the first few test sessions. We also try to consult specialists whenever we can find them, since it always saves time to benefit from somebody else's experience. Sometimes other teams will even give away a tip or two. Bob Negstad, who modified the suspension on Larry Campbell's quick Pinto, suggested that we use the 1974 Pinto steering gear because it was stronger and told us how to fabricate the necessary mountings. He also showed us how to adapt the larger 1974 disc brakes to the 1972 car. The final point to remember about building a race car is that there is no single right answer for any part of the car. Finally, we try to benefit from our own experience. When we find products or suppliers that do the job, we stick with them. Much of the special equipment on the Pinto was proven on the previous Mazda Rotary Racer project: StewartWarner instruments, Superior Industries steering wheel, Cibie lights, Raybestos disc brake linings, and Velvetouch drum brake lining specially made at Rochester Brake and Clutch in Rochester, New York. The Pinto also has certain problems of its own that require special attention. A Hurst shifter happily replaces that standard Ford part that has been known to periodically pop out of the top of the transmission if the driver pulls too hard. And Hurst/Schiefer also makes 4.10 and 4.30 axle ratios to supplement the standard Ford gears, which are correct only for superspeedways. For the most part, we used Koni shock absorbers in front, Bilsteins in back, and did some promising experimentation with Gabriel Striders along the way. Unfortunately, four races didn't give us enough time to find all of the answers in the shocks department. Which brings us to the final point about building a racing car: There is no one single right answer for any part of the car. There is no perfect spring rate, no optimum chassis stiffness, and no ideal sway-bar setting. Cars will work well with a broad range of these valves so long as they are all compatible. The only way to know what works and what doesn't is to try them. This applies particularly to the suspension. Our plan was to make the best estimate going in and then provide plenty of adjustment. It has proven to be a workable approach. The Pinto required only half a day on the skidpad and half a day of testing at Lime Rock to iron out its problems. With no more proving than that, it finished at Talladega (where two pit stops to replace flat tires—not Goodrichs—dropped it to 24th place) and then went on to win at Charlotte a week later. Would we do it all again? Well, if our mechanical insight gets much better, we figure that soon there won't even be any point in going to the track. We'll be able to decide the outcome of the races without ever leaving our desks.
Fox News
15 minutes ago
- Fox News
As Kyle Kirkwood cuts into Alex Palou's INDYCAR lead, is there time to catch him?
Kyle Kirkwood cut 27 points from the margin between him and INDYCAR points leader Alex Palou when Kirkwood won Sunday night. That sounds big, but consider this: Kirkwood would just have to do that three more times to potentially catch Palou as he's still 75 points out. "Moving closer," Kirkwood said. "It's still a long ways to go." But Kirkwood's victory at World Wide Technology Raceway (commonly known as Gateway) under the lights Sunday night was about more than just math. It was about winning at a track other than a street course. Kirkwood's two previous wins this year came on street circuits at Long Beach and Detroit, with Detroit his fourth career win and them all on temporary circuits on city streets. "You get your fourth and people are like, 'Another street course for Kirkwood' — it's not as big of a deal now, when is he going to win something else?'" Kirkwood said. "It takes [the focus] away from the street courses, so this was huge for me. This was by far bigger than [Detroit] because of that." That's not to say Detroit wasn't satisfying for Kirkwood. He made moves for passes that he was proud of making and left with the feeling of earning the win. But to win on the 1.25-mile oval at Gateway was a statement win, one that other people will notice and one that signaled he needs to be taken seriously as a title contender. "[It] just like kind of puts a stamp down a little bit, more like, 'Hey, this kid might actually be able to contend for a championship and do things,'" Kirkwood said. Could he win a championship? Kirkwood knows how to race for a title. He won titles in USF2000 in 2018, USF Pro 2000 in 2019 and Indy NXT in 2021. If he's going to compete for the 2025 championship, he will need to perform on the three types of circuits remaining in the final nine races — ovals (Iowa doubleheader, Milwaukee and Nashville), permanent road courses (Road America, Mid-Ohio, Laguna Seca and Portland) and one street circuit (Toronto). "Everybody knows you've got to be diverse in this series," Kirkwood said. "You've got to win at multiple circuits. You've got to win at multiple venues. "Whether it's a short oval, long oval, street course, road course, whatever it might be, you've got to win at all of them. [This is a] step in the right direction for sure." Racing on ovals is an acquired skill and often requires a driver to pounce when the opportunity presents itself. "Last year, to be honest, I was too timid on the restarts and starts and kept getting passed," Kirkwood said about returning to Gateway. "I had to be pretty aggressive and take more risks than I would have liked to, but it worked out." Coming up for Kirkwood and the INDYCAR drivers is Road America (Sunday, 1:30 p.m. ET on FOX), where Palou has won in 2021 and 2023. Penske drivers Josef Newgarden (2022) and Will Power (2024) won the other most recent races. The last time an Andretti car won at Road America was with Alexander Rossi in 2019. Only Palou (five wins) and Kirkwood (three) have won races this year. Palou's wins have come at a variety of tracks with one on a street course (St. Petersburg), three on permanent road courses (Thermal, Barber, Indianapolis) and one on an oval with the Indy 500. "Everybody knows we're going to go to Road America next week and [Palou] is going to put on a show there and we'll have to do everything in our power to keep him from looking shiny once again on road courses," Kirkwood said. 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.
Fox News
15 minutes ago
- Fox News
2025 NASCAR Pocono Entry List: All 37 drivers for The Great American Getaway 400
The NASCAR Cup Series heads to Pocono Raceway for the 2025 edition of the high-speed triangle showdown. Known for its unique three-turn layout and long straightaways, Pocono promises strategic racing, bold moves, and tight battles across the field. Here's a look at the full entry list for this weekend's race.
