For Scott McLaughlin, this season in the IndyCar Series season has been a rollercoaster.
As the paddock arrives at Road America this weekend and the second half of the 2026 campaign begins, the 33-year-old New Zealander finds himself sitting seventh in the championship standings, armed with a pair of podiums and five top 10 finishes through the first nine rounds.
Driving the #3 Team Penske Chevrolet, McLaughlin is currently balancing the competitive frustration of a "what could have been" campaign with the quiet confidence of a team that is finally hitting its stride.
In five career starts at the historic 4.014-mile,14-turn circuit, McLaughlin has secured one podium and three top-10 finishes. However, the stats sheet does not necessarily reflect his pace at the track.
"I felt like the last two years we've led the race at some point," McLaughlin said. "Just the way the strategies have worked out, it just hasn't been ideal for me."
Despite the strategic headaches of previous years, McLaughlin remains bullish about the upcoming weekend.
"It’s a track that requires a lot of strategic mindset, especially if you have a yellow at a different spot. I’ve loved it ever since I came to IndyCar. I feel like I go well there."
Grading the Season: The Search for Consistency
At the midway point of the season, McLaughlin provided an honest self-performance assessment of a “B-minus” for his performances thus far.
McLaughlin views the season as a number of missed opportunities, with Detroit, where he felt a strong podium was within reach before a late run-in with former teammate Will Power, ultimately scuppered his chances. He also pointed to the round on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, where he finished 16th.
"I’d give myself so far a B-minus, maybe a B," McLaughlin admitted. "I was never an A-grade student. I'll take the pass grade and move on, but as a team, we want to keep winning races."
And getting back to Victory Lane isn’t something McLaughlin has done since the end of 2024 at the penultimate race at Milwaukee, 27 races ago.
“I’m a racer, I'm competitive, I want to win,” he said. “At the same time,it is what it is. We've had chances and we've had speed to do it. That's all I can ask for. It just hasn't quite gone our way.
“Sometimes it's like this. I've had this before in my career where I've gone 18 months, two years without a win. It's part and parcel of doing it. I feel like deep in my mind, I'm executing as well as I can. I feel like I'm driving as good as I ever have.
“It's just the competitiveness in the series right now is super high. When you have a chance to have a crack or have a win, you want to take that. That's where we probably haven't executed in the last year and a half in terms of taking the chance to win or maybe it hasn't worked out in that regard. We've been right there, thereabouts. If we can keep being consistent, keep putting ourselves in that position, I'm sure it's going to open the gates.”
Building the "Special Sauce"
The narrative of McLaughlin’s season is defined largely by his internal dynamics, with an overhaul on the timing stand with new race engineer Raul Prados and the addition of team strategist Tim Cindric on his radio.
While there have been “teething problems” in getting acclimated, it has come with bright spots, notably the season-opening runner-up at the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. However, McLaughlin pointed out the group didn’t start clicking until about a month later at the round on the streets of Long Beach.
“I've actually had to tune T.C. (Cindric) up on a couple of things, how loud he's talking, what I want to hear at different points,” McLaughlin said. “He's really receptive to that.
“As a stand, it sounded like it started clicking around Long Beach. The first couple of events we had St. Pete and Phoenix, it was a little bit interesting at those points. A couple little teething problems. Nothing that we couldn't manage.
“I felt like we had the right guy there. Just managing it, along with Dave Faustino (Team Penske’s technical director and part of McLaughlin’s engineering group), who I hadn't worked directly with since I've been at Penske. I worked alongside him when he was engineering Will (Power). … It's just a matter of getting used to different people on your radio or the way they speak, how they adapt in different situations."
McLaughlin was quick to note, though, where this latest challenge of getting acclimated to all of the personnel changes within his team ranks since coming over from Supercars in late 2020.
“It's been fun,” he said. “For sure I'd be lying if I said it's been taking longer than I thought it would have for sure. Luckily, I haven't had much change besides moving from Supercars to Indy cars. This is probably the biggest change I've had since that period.”
