{"id":513317,"date":"2026-03-02T06:10:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T06:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/513317\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T06:10:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T06:10:23","slug":"scott-mclaughlin-finishes-second-indycar-st-petersburg-2026-for-team-penske","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/513317\/","title":{"rendered":"Scott McLaughlin finishes second IndyCar St Petersburg 2026 for Team Penske"},"content":{"rendered":"

SCOTT McLaughlin has started off his IndyCar season strongly, with a second-place finish on the streets of St Petersburg.<\/p>\n

After winning the past three successive titles, Alex Palou resumed normal business with a comfortable win.<\/p>\n

After finishing third in the standings in both 2023 and \u201924, McLaughlin this season is looking to bounce back from a tough ninth-place final placing from last year.<\/p>\n

The result is his third straight podium after finishing third in both Milwaukee and Nashville to round out last year.<\/p>\n

Starting from the 11th pole position of his career, his first since the corresponding race last year, the Kiwi led the field away, with a multi-car incident at turn four on lap 1 of 100 bringing out the first caution of the day.<\/p>\n

That incident involved debutant Mick Schumacher, plus Santino Ferrucci and Sting Ray Robb.<\/p>\n

Will Power\u2019s Team Penske replacement, David Malukas, suffered a tyre drama early, while Power himself slapped the wall returning to the airfield section of the circuit, retiring mid-race.<\/p>\n

It was Power\u2019s second incident for the weekend for his new Andretti Global squad.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Scott Dixon\u2019s tough weekend ended when his Dallara lost a wheel, bringing out the yellow flags. Earlier in the preliminaries, the Kiwi smote the wall head-on but was uninjured.<\/p>\n

Following a round of pit stops, McLaughlin became engaged in a battle with Marcus Ericsson, with the pair settling behind Alex Palou on the road.<\/p>\n

McLaughlin then lost a spot when Kyle Kirkwood swept around the outside at turn 4, while Christian Lundgaard made moves into the top three.<\/p>\n

Following the final stop, Kirkwood used the undercut to move past McLaughlin in an identical move, but positions were quickly reversed at turn 10, with Lundgaard also blasting past Kirkwood.<\/p>\n

At the finish, it was Palou by a clear 12 seconds over McLaughlin, Lundgaard, Kirkwood, Pato O\u2019Ward, Ericsson, Josef Newgarden, Romain Grosjean and Rinus Veekay, with Dennis Hauger rounding out the top ten.<\/p>\n

Next week, IndyCar heads west to Phoenix, where the class will run alongside the NASCAR Cup Series.<\/p>\n

2010 Japanese driver Ryo Orime’s V8 Ute Crash at Sydney Olympic Park<\/p>\n

Japanese driver Ryo Orime’s race debut in the Aussie V8 Ute series only lasted half a lap before this massive pile-up in 2010 when he fell victim to the tough Sydney Olympic Park street circuit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCOTT McLaughlin has started off his IndyCar season strongly, with a second-place finish on the streets of St…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-513317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}