{"id":173459,"date":"2026-03-01T03:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T03:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/173459\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T03:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T03:21:08","slug":"st-pete-qualifying-recap-mclaughlin-wins-poll-hauger-surprises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/173459\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Pete qualifying recap: McLaughlin wins poll, Hauger surprises"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Motorsports insider Zion Brown recaps the qualifying round for the 2026 Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. #indycar<\/p>\n<p class=\"caas-show-transcript\">View More<\/p>\n<p>Video Transcript<\/p>\n<p>The sun has set on the qualifying round here at the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n<p>Live from St. Pete, I&#8217;m Zion Brown, IndyStar TV, and we have a pole-sitter.<\/p>\n<p>Scott McLaughlin will be on the pole for the second straight year at the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n<p>This year a little different for him.<\/p>\n<p>His new strategist, Tim Cindric, back with Team Penske now on the timing stand for Scott McLaughlin.<\/p>\n<p>McLaughlin said it was kind of funny today.<\/p>\n<p>He had to tell Cindric to calm down and, and quiet down at times.<\/p>\n<p>But those two have made a great pairing so far, as we&#8217;ve seen now with McLaughlin of Team Penske being at the pole.<\/p>\n<p>But the big news really from the qualifying session was what Dale Coyne Racing was able to do with Dennis Hauger and Romain Grosjean.<\/p>\n<p>Both of those two made fast six qualifying in the last round of qualifying.<\/p>\n<p>The rookie Hauger, the Norwegian, will qualify and sit at third to begin tomorrow&#8217;s race.<\/p>\n<p>He qualified ahead of Alex Palou, who&#8217;ll be fourth.<\/p>\n<p>So those two will be in a row together in row two.<\/p>\n<p>Grosjean will be in sixth.<\/p>\n<p>But really a surprise to see a rookie in a team with Grosjean, who was just announced two weeks ago yesterday that he would officially be in that Dale Coyne Racing car, and we see now after a pair of tests Grosjean went through for DCR.<\/p>\n<p>He and Hauger really making a push toward a victory potentially tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;ll have full updates on the race and all we got from race weekend tomorrow afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>For IndyStar TV, I&#8217;m Zion Brown.<\/p>\n<p class=\"caas-hide-transcript\">Close<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Motorsports insider Zion Brown recaps the qualifying round for the 2026 Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. #indycar View&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[82334,202,204,203,199,201,200,36012],"class_list":{"0":"post-173459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-qualifying-round","9":"tag-st-pete","10":"tag-st-pete-headlines","11":"tag-st-pete-news","12":"tag-st-petersburg","13":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","14":"tag-st-petersburg-news","15":"tag-zion-brown"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}