WEST ALLIS, Wisc. – Minutes after Kyle Kirkwood stepped out of his No. 27 Andretti Global Honda on pitlane at Portland International Raceway, the 25-year-old driver strided over the IndyCar race control’s transporter to ask for an impromptu meeting.

The subject: his racing.

Earlier that afternoon, Kirkwood had been running side-by-side with Scott Dixon on Lap 1, held the inside line and intentionally ran the six-time champ wide to edge ahead, while the No. 9 Honda’s two left-side tires ended up in the grass and sent Dixon into scramble mode to recover. Moments later, as Dixon tried to keep speed with those whizzing around him from both sides, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Pietro Fittipaldi attempted to sneak through on Dixon’s right side, carrying more speed through Turn 8, but banged wheels with the No. 9 and sent the Ganassi car hurtling into the barriers – all but ending Dixon’s 2024 title hopes.

In his interview with NBC Sports after he was seen and released from the infield care center, Dixon put the onus of the accident squarely on Kirkwood’s shoulders, even though Fittipaldi was the one who picked up an avoidable contact penalty and received a drive-thru in the aftermath.

“(Kirkwood) just did a lunge and gave me zero room, shoved me off, and then you’re trying to recover,” Dixon said. “Fittipaldi getting a penalty there? No fault on him. Penalty should’ve been on (Kirkwood). The No. 27, I think, caused all that to be honest.”

Speaking with IndyStar and NBC Sports Thursday at the ‘Welcome Luncheon’ ahead of this weekend’s doubleheader at The Milwaukee Mile, Kirkwood said he’d reached out to Dixon to “apologize for initiating the incident,” but wouldn’t go so far to say he’d outright caused the crash.

Though the two hadn’t yet spoken at the time of the interview, Kirkwood imagined part of Dixon’s frustration was that the series veteran typically doesn’t race others in that same manner. Kirkwood lamented, though, that that caliber of wheel-banging and aggressive, somewhat intentional running of competitors off the track has been clearly been accepted by race control over the last year-plus.

For what it’s worth, Kirkwood himself would like to see that change.

“Ultimately, everyone has been racing like that recently, where if you have a nose on somebody, you just drive them off the track, and that’s completely acceptable in the eyes of IndyCar, where you’ve got to do that to get a pass done in certain situations,” Kirkwood said Thursday. “I felt bad that I put (Dixon) in that position and bad that it’s now taken him completely out of the (title race), but at the same time, that’s something we need to look at in the offseason with IndyCar and see, ‘Has this gotten out of hand? At what point has this gone too far?’

“There are certain situations where (race control) is hyper-sensitive about blocking, and you get a penalty, but if you just open your hands and shove them into the wall, it’s completely acceptable. That’s something we need to look into, to be honest.”

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When asked how long he thinks this behavior has been tolerated on-track in IndyCar, Kirkwood said he and other drivers point back to Dixon’s run-in with Pato O’Ward at the Grand Prix of Long Beach in 2023, where during a battle for 6th-place fewer than 20 laps into the race, O’Ward dove inside Dixon on the entrance to the right-hand Turn 8. Their contact sent Dixon sailing into the tires, and though he was able to continue, his day eventually ended in 27th with a mechanical issue CGR ruled stemmed from the contact with O’Ward’s No. 5 Chevy.

It was the Ganassi driver’s only finish outside the top-7 all season.

“(O’Ward’s move) seemed extremely late. I wouldn’t have chosen to do that,” Dixon said at the time. “But if that’s how the series wants us to race, then I guess it’s all gloves off at this point.”

Dixon’s wife, Emma, was even more fiery in her comments about the incident on Instagram: “Such a shame that an amazing series like IndyCar gets race control so wrong. Makes the series look bad. No consistency…Such a shame. We love this series, but race control sucks.”

O’Ward, who later in the race would attempt – and fail – to make an even more daring move in the same corner on Kirkwood, the race’s eventual winner, was unwavering in defense of his racing, saying, “If (Dixon) feels that was my fault, well, sorry you feel that way, but I don’t agree. I was on the inside, and he decided to stay on the outside. I’m not going to apologize for that. We’re racing, and a lot of times when I’ve been in that situation, I just let the guy go. If you’re on the outside, you’re more vulnerable for those things happening.”

Race control declined to penalize O’Ward in either incident.

Dixon on contact with O'Ward: 'I guess it's all gloves off at this point'

“Everyone was shocked that was allowed, and now it’s become the new normal,” Kirkwood said Thursday. “And I get it from their point of view. They don’t want to dictate our racing. They want us to fight it out amongst each other, but it’s getting to the point now where it’s actually making the racing worse.

“The only time you see side-by-side racing is when someone is running someone else off the track.”

'I hate racing like that, but it's completely allowed'

After the race Sunday, Kirkwood said he went to race control and pleaded his case, asking for a change to the status quo.

“I went to race control and said, ‘I hate racing like that, but it’s completely allowed’,” Kirkwood said. “I explained why I thought it shouldn’t be, but at the moment, there’s not a whole lot they can do because it’s been allowed for so long, but I think it’s going to be an offseason topic for us.”

When asked if he felt it there was a generational divide in racing etiquette, which has become a topic in other major racing series around the country and world at times, Kirkwood said it was far more widespread.

What went wrong: Inside Josef Newgarden's too slow, too late restart and what comes next

“I’d say 90% of the field, especially most of the guys I’ve been racing this year, they would’ve done me worse than what I did to (Dixon),” Kirkwood continued. “All I did was make him go two tires off in the grass. I wouldn’t say it was a super late move from me. He knew I was there, and we were going two-by-two going through the corner, but like I said, a lot of people do it, and you can’t just treat certain people differently – especially when that’s become the norm for our racing.

“Honestly, Will (Power) is the first guy to do it to you. You almost expect it, and same with Josef (Newgarden). That’s normal, and it’s allowed, so they obviously will do it. Some drivers don’t, and Dixon and Palou are two of the better ones you can race side-by-side with and have a good feeling they’re not going to completely screw you. I get (Dixon’s) frustration, but at the same time, it’s a little bit awkward because it’s completely allowed.”

When asked about the way in which he’d like to see the racing change in IndyCar, Kirkwood pointed to his four-turn, side-by-side battle with Dale Coyne Racing’s Toby Sowery that the pair marveled at after Sunday’s race. Though Kirkwood was penalized for blocking at the start of it and was eventually forced to give up two positions – a call he didn’t wholly agree with – the Andretti driver said that sequence was what series officials should look to promote more of in the future.

“If I’d opened my hands and run (Sowery) off the track, it would’ve been allowed, but the way it should be, if someone’s on the outside or inside of you, you need to give them room,” Kirkwood said. “And what that turns into is racing like that, where you see guys racing for multiple corners to get a pass done – not just dive and open your hands and run somebody off.

“I think if you’re in the spot where you dive under somebody and can’t keep (your car) off of them and end up running them off the track, that should be a penalty because you’ve lost control of your car. It might be an unpopular opinion amongst all the drivers, but that’s the standpoint I’ve had ever since I got into IndyCar.”

Friday evening after a post-practice press conference at The Milwaukee Mile, Dixon noted that he had finally spoken to Kirkwood about the incident. Unsurprisingly, the six-time series champion was still bitter about the contact and the way in which it was delivered.

"It was definitely an F-U move, and I explained that to him," Dixon said. "That's kind of amateur when you're doing stuff like that. But it's also how the series allows you to race, so I don't know what the answer is on that, to be honest.

"In my way of racing, the outside white line, there's a wall there. You just can't run somebody completely off. We saw the chain effect of what happened there, and then with Pietro, who really had nowhere to go. It was because of the No. 27 the issue we had. I (told Kyle) I wouldn't race him liike that, and that was kind of the end of it."

Unlike Kirkwood, Dixon said he has no desire to plead his case with race control in hopes of seeking change to racing parameters, noting, "I figured it would be on deaf ears."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar race control needs to rethink side-by-side racing, per Kirkwood