\u201cI think we left a lot of points on the table. I think we left probably 85 to 90 points on the table at ovals. At the Indy 500 I felt like I could have easily finished in the top five [he crashed on the warm-up lap]. <\/p>\n
Scott McLaughlin: “There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.” Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n
\u201cGateway we were on for probably a win or P2 and then the car broke down. At a couple of other races I got taken out when we knew my car was really, really good. So, you know, I felt like we left a lot of points on the table. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf I got some of those points back, just on the ovals, I\u2019m probably third or fourth in the championship, but that\u2019s all pie in the sky stuff now. <\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we had really good speed, but at the end of the day Alex Palou [champion] had like just a crazy year. I probably had the best start to my season before Indy and I was behind by nearly 100 points, but he raised the bar this year and that\u2019s a credit to him and his team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of McLaughlin and his team\u2019s struggles in 2025 can be attributed to big changes at Penske during 2025. Chief among them was the departure in May of Tim Cendric, Penske Racing president, Ron Ruzewski, managing director of Penske\u2019s NTT IndyCar Series, and Kyle Moyer, Penske\u2019s IndyCar general manager, after the team breached an IndyCar rule.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went into seven or eight races in a row where the team was just sort of stretched, and at the end of the day people were learning new roles. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt really wasn\u2019t until the last two, three, or maybe four races where everyone got really comfortable in their roles and we were starting to work on things that we should have worked on mid-season. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely slowed our progress for a little bit, but I think there\u2019s a light at the end of the tunnel \u2013 and I truly believe that \u2013 so I\u2019m excited for the years ahead,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
McLaughlin ticked a race off his bucket list last weekend when he competed at the Suzuka 1000 endurance event. Despite not having raced a tin top since Daytona in January, he and co-drivers Alex Sims and Nicky Catsburg finished a creditable third in the pro class for Johor Motorsport Racing in a Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also got a couple of other races he\u2019d like to tackle.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that I\u2019ve done the Bathurst 12-hour before I would love to do Le Mans to add to Daytona and Suzuka. There\u2019s also N\u00fcrburgring, but I\u2019m a bit on the fence about that one as it\u2019s a little sketchy. Oh, and also the Spa 24 Hour,\u201d said McLaughlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI think we left a lot of points on the table. I think we left probably 85 to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[30600,13991,836,74,28824,18239,6181,18984,5504,3011,3232,14724,30602,12065,30601,5756,1362,20297,130,111,139,69,90,2847,20248,6744,14717,30603,7798,6653,1439,8139,6926,213,199,14920,3755,13983,1316,6202,379],"class_list":["post-32134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-10th","tag-13991","tag-836","tag-after","tag-arrived","tag-championship","tag-collected","tag-finish","tag-following","tag-four","tag-fourth","tag-further","tag-grabbing","tag-immediate","tag-impression","tag-indycar","tag-made","tag-mclaughlin","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-only","tag-opener","tag-place","tag-podium","tag-podiums","tag-race","tag-reflects","tag-scene","tag-scott","tag-season","tag-sports","tag-take","tag-texas","tag-third","tag-tough","tag-when","tag-wins","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}