It’s a true measure of Scott McLaughlin’s standing within IndyCar in this, his third year, that we are no longer surprised at his achievements. Autosport was speaking to a race engineer from a rival team back in March, after the 16-car test at Barber Motorsports Park, in which the driver of the #3 Chevrolet-powered Team Penske entry emerged quickest by two tenths. Asked what he learned from the test, the engineer’s instant reply was: “That McLaughlin is one f***ing quick dude around here.”
Then you remembered that McLaughlin won at Mid-Ohio and Portland last year, and even aced the virtual race around Barber, when IndyCar kept us entertained in the early months of COVID-cursed 2020 by hosting online sim racing. Natural-terrain road courses are very much his thing.
So it was a surprise last weekend that he wasn’t on pole position, or even the front row. Instead it was Andretti Autosport’s Romain Grosjean who scored his second pole of the season, the third of his IndyCar career, by outpacing Chip Ganassi Racing’s 2021 Barber winner Alex Palou by 0.073 seconds. Pato O’Ward was third in his Arrow McLaren entry and McLaughlin fourth. The Kiwi outpaced his
