Jenna Fryer
INDIANAPOLIS — Late at night, long after Scott McLaughlin had clinched the pole position for the Indianapolis 500, his adrenaline still high and unable to sleep, he snuck into the grandstands to gather his thoughts.
McLaughlin sat alone at the darkened Indianapolis Motor Speedway, listening to Post Malone and scrolling through his phone, replying to every congratulatory message that came his way for a race that the IndyCar star considers the greatest achievement of his career.
McLaughlin will give Team Penske an exclusive front row at the Indy 500 for the first time since winning the pole position in the race on May 26, 1988. He will start alongside Penske teammate Will Power and defending winner Josef Newgarden.
McLaughlin stared between his cell phone and the Penske pit stand, in awe of what he’d accomplished. His average lap time during his four qualifying laps was a record, and the result felt so certain after the first lap that his parents, watching back home in New Zealand, were moved to tears by the imminent moment.
What happened to the 30-year-old McLaughlin? After accepting his pole position award, he headed to the golf course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. His boss, Roger Penske, had told him to rest for the rest of the day. And that’s how he found himself alone in the grandstands at IMS, supposedly asleep.
“I was just sitting by myself. I had music on. I had like 250-300 emails. I answered them all,” McLaughlin told The Associated Press in an interview. “I knew I wasn’t going to sleep and I just wanted to enjoy the place. Any day of the year at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is special, but after you get the pole position? I didn’t want to go to sleep. I didn’t want the day to end. This is the biggest accomplishment of my career.”
That’s saying a lot. McLaughlin was already well-established when he joined IndyCar late in the 2020 season. Fresh from winning a third consecutive Australian V8 Supercars title, a record 18 race wins in 2019 and wiping the Bathurst 1000 from his resume, he felt there was little left to achieve, even as he raced around the world.
So he moved to the US – his wife Carly was born in New York and had received an offer from Penske to race in IndyCar – so it wasn’t a particularly difficult decision – and over three seasons he has made impressive progress.
He won three races in 2022 and finished third last year, the best result among Team Penske drivers, ahead of Newgarden, who finished fifth despite winning the Indy 500 and three other races.
McLaughlin will be in the lead heading into the green as Penske seeks a record-extending 20th victory in “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”
The front-row sweep comes as Team Penske is trying to recover from a cheating scandal that led IndyCar to disqualify Newgarden’s win and McLaughlin’s third-place finish in the season opener in March after it found that its drivers had illegally used an unauthorized push-to-pass boost for extra horsepower.
Penske then suspended four team members, including team president Tim Cindric, who was Newgarden’s strategist and is considered one of the best in the industry.
Not long after qualifying on the front row, Team Penske added another victory when Joey Logano won NASCAR’s $1 million All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
“Obviously the person that was hurt the most by this was Roger and he took it pretty hard,” McLaughlin said of the cheating scandal. “I think we have great depth and that’s a testament to the team. But this has been good medicine. Anytime your integrity and reputation is questioned, and I understand that given what happened, it sucks. But in terms of how to turn those negatives into positives, I think Team Penske is doing a good job.”
Power had said for months that Team Penske’s offseason work had been so intense that he was confident at least one of the three Chevrolets would make the pole, and McLaughlin wished Power had been a little less confident.
“If anything, I would have liked him to hold it back a little bit more because I wasn’t as confident as he was,” McLaughlin said. “I just don’t think there was any need for unnecessary pressure. We knew. We all quietly believed we could do it, but there was no need to tell everyone that.”
Indy 500
Content: Indycar racing
Date and Time: May 26th, 12:30pm
Location: Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Television: WKYC
