in the firings of last May<\/a>, while long-time engineer Ben Bretzman has been elevated to engineering manager of competition.<\/p>\nFor the new season, the returning Tim Cindric – teammate Josef Newgarden\u2019s ex-strategist and former team president – has stepped into McLaughlin\u2019s strategist role and veteran Raul Prados is the new race engineer for the No.3 Chevrolet. And there is already high praise from the driver about the influence of the fresh faces.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a testament to Raul and the camaraderie that we\u2019ve built already and the understanding for each other – and that can only grow from here,\u201d McLaughlin said of his season-opening pole. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely a refresh. All the guys that I lost are some of my best friends but they\u2019ve gone on to cooler things for their careers and I can only wish them well.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now I\u2019ve got guys that can do just the same job, if not better. I felt like me and TC, it was our first qualifying session together and I was telling him in spots to stop talking; we\u2019re sort of warming up to each other a little bit and it was fun. There\u2019s still a lot of things that we can work on as a group together but this is a great start.\u201d<\/p>\n
McLaughlin finished fourth from pole in St. Pete last year, falling foul of an ill-timed caution. It marked the first of four top-six finishes in the opening five rounds, before he only once finished in the top 10 in the subsequent eight races.<\/p>\n
He recovered form towards the climax with four successive top 10s, including podiums in the final two races. But the challenging mid-phase of the year and failing to maximise throughout his season resulted in a regression from successive third-place championship results to 10th in the standings. And that is where execution comes in.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI know I\u2019m 32 but I guess you could say it\u2019s maturity a little bit – IndyCar maturity, knowing how long the season is,\u201d McLaughlin said of last year\u2019s shortcomings in execution. \u201cOne pole\u2026 it\u2019s quite easy to be 20th next week at Phoenix.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s IndyCar racing. Enjoy the highs but work hard because it\u2019s so close that people are going to be coming for us tomorrow. And we know how good the No.10 car has been and how good everyone else has been for so many years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just going out there, I\u2019m trying to enjoy driving the car like a little kid again, just doing what I love and telling Raul what I want from the car and what will make me go faster. And we\u2019re doing that. I didn\u2019t feel good at Q1. I said: \u2019I need this, this and this to go faster.\u2019 He gave me it, and it was about mixing the old potion together and sending it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regardless of this fast start to the season, with 18 races ahead – including this one still to come from pole position – McLaughlin is staying firmly grounded<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to be better [than last year],\u201d he said. \u201cThis is nice but we know we\u2019re fast here. It\u2019s just a matter of executing. Sorry I keep using that word but you\u2019re going to get used to it. Yeah, I\u2019m not counting my chickens before they hatch.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As he looks to rebound from a disappointing 2025 season, \u201cexecution\u201d is very much the watchword for Team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-173509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173509","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=173509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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