Scott McLaughlin’s transition to the America’s premier racing series has been nothing short of astounding.
Never mind moving from one hemisphere to the other, the three-time V8 Supercars champion had only driven a single-seater once, a Formula Ford car over ten years previously, before he made his IndyCar debut with penske at the end of 2020.
Fast-forward two years and McLauglin has become one of the leading drivers in one of the world’s fastest racing series – last weekend at Portland he took his third win of the season, and now has an outside chance of winning the title on Sunday at Laguna Seca in only his second full year of IndyCar.
“We’re a long shot and I don’t care – we’re a shot and I’m looking forward to it,” he said immediately after Portland.
“The ultimate is obviously to win a championship and the 500” Scott McLaughlin
“When Roger [Penkse] and [team president] Tim [Cindric] gave me the opportunity to come over here, I knew it was going to be hard but I thought one day we could win.
“But the ultimate is obviously to win a championship and the 500. And I’m not going to stop until I get one of those or both. It’s a long way to climb but you’ve gotta dream big to get it done.”
Vying for the title with series veterans Will Power, Scott Dixon, Josef Newgarden this Sunday will be tough enough, never mind in a form of racing that is diametrically opposed to everything McLaughlin had raced before, the immense challenge requiring a complete transformation of the Penske driver’s style.
However, the Kiwi already knew his racing skill-set meant he could adapt.
McLaughlin is now a title contender going into the 2022 IndyCar finale
IndyCar
“The best part about my whole journey here is that I’ve done this at an elite level for a long time,” he told Sky Sports F1’s Tom Gaymor.
“It’s just I’m in a different car, I’m a rookie in this car. Once I get up to speed with it, when I get into these situations, it’s ‘Well, I’ve done this before, I’ve controlled races from the front.’”
That’s exactly what McLaughlin managed to do at both St Petersburg and Portland this year, as well as picking up a win at Mid-Ohio when Pato O’Ward’s McLaren broke down.
As well as mastering the DW12’s driving characteristics, McLaughlin had to also change his mental approach and perspective to a race weekend.
“You’ve got to be on it every time – you saw how close it was”
The Indy cars don’t have roll cages, fenders, or much of a margin for contact between cars, unlike his previous V8 Mustang. Instead of an offset seating position to the right like his supercar, McLaughlin sits in the centre of his Indy machine, more reclined than he was in his older, trusty steed and with no real wiggle room in the car for creature comforts.
With no more mirrors to knock off or doors to rub against other cars, the racing attitude had to change. Instead of keeping the weight on the nose to turn as he used to in his former series, McLaughlin had to learn to trust the aerodynamics of the Indy car to get it around corners. Out of the car, there was more mental growth ahead.
McLaughlin’s biggest advancement came from understanding how to properly build up an IndyCar race weekend, especially on street circuits where there is no runoff and mistakes are heavily punished. One mistake early in a street course race weekend can have a devastating effect on how the rest of that weekend goes, like in Detroit in 2021.
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A crash in that weekend’s first practice session created a loss of track time that hindered both McLaughlin’s ability to learn a new track and the crew’s ability to hone in on the perfect setup. Finishing on the fringe edges of the top 20 in both doubleheader races that year was the result.
“I’ve just got to make sure that I build the weekend up and it starts in practice one. It doesn’t just start [in] qualifying. So that’s one mental thing I’ve had to do,” McLaughlin told Motor Sport.
“IndyCar is detail-driven, you know. You’ve got to be on it every time. You saw how close the field was at the Indy Grand Prix [in May]. You can’t miss a beat, and I guess I’ve refined a bit more of my skill needed to drive the Indy car, but I still have a lot further to go.”
Realising how much there is to learn about his new discipline has helped McLaughlin remind himself that the journey in becoming a top-tier IndyCar driver wasn’t exactly going to be as fast as he would like it to be.
McLaughlin won first time out at St Petersburg this year
IndyCar
McLaughlin came from a championship where he was in the top five in an overwhelming majority of the on-track sessions. Switching to IndyCar, the youngest winner in Supercars history was now fighting hard to just get into the top-10 while his teammates were fighting for podium finishes in 2021.
That all changed at the start of 2022. McLaughlin won the season-opening race on the streets of St. Petersburg from pole position, vindicating Roger Penske’s faith in the young racer.
“My heart-rate peaked in victory lane!” he told Gaymor after his debut win. “I was just so exhausted, it was just such a big relief.
“To be able to say I’m an IndyCar race-winner, after moving to the other side of the world in the middle of a pandemic – it’s been tough.”
McLaughlin nearly won the second race of the season at Texas Motor Speedway, but lost out as teammate Josef Newgarden passed him in the last corner of the last lap for the win. Still, McLaughlin didn’t let it get him down too much.
“I’m very critical of myself, like I look at every little detail,” McLaughlin said. “So after Texas, I was a bit like, agghhh, you know, regardless of what I learned and what I didn’t learn, it was annoying. I wanted to get it done. But I looked at it and I grew with that disappointment you could say, where St. Pete, I was just riding a high it was just a big party after the race, but we sort of enjoyed it.”
Physically, McLaughlin had to change his entire routine, losing just over 9 kilograms (20 pounds) from the middle of 2020 until the start of the 2021 IndyCar season. The workout routine changed to high intensity and explosive workouts to help build upper body strength since Indy cars have no power steering, unlike the Supercars back home.
The Kiwi also mastered Mid-Ohio
IndyCar
In his former category, McLaughlin had to do a lot of right foot braking and heel-toe movements with his feet, so his workouts were almost entirely leg-focused to keep those muscles sharp. Moving over to IndyCar, those muscles aren’t as important since there’s not much room in the tub to heel-toe, but with how many g-forces IndyCar drivers pull on the ovals, McLaughlin had to work on his neck strength to keep his head upright in the car.
After working on his physical form, McLaughlin had to learn all about turning left. With only laps turned on iRacing as a guide, there were no bad habits to break as he learned all he could from oval master Rick Mears.
Those lessons have paid off – he now has a chance of winning an incredible first IndyCar title at only his second attempt.
