Scott McLaughlin Is IndyCar's Breakout Star of 2022
Scott McLaughlin’s breakout IndyCar season is a pear-shaped thing of beauty.
A legend Down Under by his mid-20s, the triple Australian Supercars champion was Roger Penske’s great experiment in 2021 as the New Zealander was dropped into the NTT IndyCar Series with almost no open-wheel experience.
In trading a touring car for an Indy car, McLaughlin was thrust into a world that was wholly unfamiliar, moving from Australia to North Carolina where he’d join Penske’s legendary IndyCar team filled with Indy 500 winner and series’ champions.
As one might expect for a driver dropped into a radically different form of racing, McLaughlin’s debut season offered glimpses of promise as he learned to drive a car that weighs half as much as the Ford Mustang he’d mastered with similar power in Supercars. But, in a radical difference, learning to trust the better part of 5000 pounds of downforce gluing his No. 3 Chevy Indy car to the ground is where a lot of growth was found, and then in the new art of oval racing, the native of New Zealand has another giant education to undertake.
Altogether, his rookie season ended as expected with a finish of 14th place in the Drivers’ championship. It was his return as an IndyCar sophomore where the Kiwi sent a message we’ve been following throughout 2022.
Polesitter at the first race on the streets of St. Petersburg, McLaughlin went on to win the opening race of the season and backed it up with leading most of the next race on the big Texas Motor Speedway oval before placing second. From a bit of an afterthought in 2021 to the early driver to beat upon his return, McLaughlin then stumbled.
Over the next four races he dropped down the championship standings with finishes of 14th, a rebound to sixth, and then the month of May saw him plummet with finishes of 20th on the Indianapolis road course, 29th at the double-points Indy 500, and 19th at the next event in Detroit.
Holding first in the championship after St. Pete and Texas was traded for 10th departing Indianapolis and that unsightly pear-shape turn in his season.
Sitting fifth in the standings going into Sunday’s IndyCar season finale at Laguna Seca, McLaughlin has recovered by adding two more wins to give himself a remote chance of winning the title.
“I was thinking about that and it was one of those things that you had to go through to get to the point I'm at now,” he told Road & Track. “Unfortunately, it happened, but it's not unfortunate, because if you look at the positives, I think it's made me a better driver for years to come about being consistently in the race.
“I think of those periods like Detroit and I kicked myself and at Indianapolis where, to be honest, I tried to create something that wasn’t there. I just over-drove; I went down the escape route at Detroit… crashed Indy. And that was all because I was getting excited. I'm like, ‘I'm gonna get like a couple more spots for the pit strategy to work out really good,’ and we can find ourselves in the shit. I was trying to force it. So now, I just like to let it happen. And I think I had to go through those negatives to make a positive. I'm pretty grateful for that.”
Many extraordinary things need to happen this weekend for McLaughlin to vault ahead of the four drivers in front of him in the championship. It’s given the 29-year-old a chance to drive with complete freedom and leave the worries to those with better odds of being crowned.
“I'm really excited because the best thing I can do for the team is to win the race,” he said. “I love the track. I've just got nothing to lose really and everything to gain so for me. I'm just hoping to take all the learnings from this year and just put it all on the table and try and make it happen. I think regardless of where we start on Sunday, I think we've got a shot regardless.”
Among McLaughlin’s many skills, his friendly ways have helped to build immense chemistry with his race engineer Ben Bretzman, crew chief Matt Jonsson, and race strategist Kyle Moyer. As a quartet, they’ve become wickedly effective in a short amount of time.
“Between Matt, Kyle, and Benny, we've got such great chemistry and I count myself very lucky to have these guys as my guys,” he added. “We're friends, we play golf together, we hang out, away from the track, we drink together. We play video games together. It's like best friends. Kyle, I just have so much respect for him. He's a quiet guy, loves his horses, does his thing, but he's one of the smartest brains on pit road, I never, ever counteract what he says.
“Matt, I've never had someone on a car that's so thorough. He’s a machine. Never stops working, knows when to chill out what he needs to but it's just one of the hardest workers I've ever worked with in my life. And Benny, just learning together and I think they're learning me. But I'm also thinking that they're molding me into how they want they've wanted, almost like an experiment. I'm soaking in as much as I can. I'm a lot better driving-wise as a racecar driver with the help of those guys. I feel like I'm the most complete I've ever been in my career.”
McLaughlin’s also loving the love he’s getting from American racing fans who’ve taken to his IndyCar-bro personality.
“My Twitter, my Instagram, Facebook, everything’s grown tenfold,” he said. “Obviously, Americans love a winner. And they gravitate towards winning and I love that they celebrate winners, which is really cool. I think America has allowed me to be myself, too. I have a lot of fun, as you know, but when it's time to put the head down and get sorted. I'm probably one of the most serious people out there. Very competitive, get angry when I need to.
“But I think people appreciate that and Americans enjoy me being who I am. And I'm privileged to be here.”
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