It’s a Sunday afternoon in February,and McLaughlin – one of the most successful racers in the history of Australian motorsport – is at the Grand Prix of St Petersburg,Florida,fending off a furious challenge from a key rival with 12 laps to go.
Defending champion Alex Palou gets within a car length of the 28-year-old Kiwi,but McLaughlin manages to keep his cool and
McLaughlin spoke to his family after the win.AP
The stunning victory was a much-need confidence boost for the three-time V8 supercar champion,who moved to the US in late 2020 as a much-hyped IndyCar rookie,only to suffer a disappointing slump the following year.
Now,he’s back in form and eyeing off an even bigger prize this weekend as he competes for racing legend Roger Penke’s team in the so-called “greatest spectacle in racing”:the Indy 500 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“I guess I was a big fish in a small pond in Australia in many ways,which is why I always wanted to come to America,” he tells me,ahead of the championship race,due to start around 2.45am Monday morning AEST.
“I really wanted to challenge myself again and be back to the point where I’m a rookie,and Roger gave me that opportunity. But there were times when I was like:far out,this is probably harder than I thought. After a year and half,I feel like I’ve finally put my feet on the ground. Everything has just started to click.”
The 3-time Supercar champion lines up for his second Indianapolis 500 race.
McLaughlin’s move from Brisbane to North Carolina,where Team Penske is based,coincided with one of the most challenging periods in America’s history,right in the middle of the incendiary 2020 presidential race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
COVID was surging in every state,sending hospitals nationwide into red alert over the winter. Border restrictions also prevented McLaughlin from seeing his parents,Wayne and Diane,until this week,when they were finally able to leave New Zealand and reunite with their son.
“Moving in the middle of a pandemic was crazy,” McLaughlin says. “Everything was locked down,we were worried if we’d start the season on time,and then knowing mum and dad weren’t going to be able to visit any time soon from New Zealand was definitely hard.”
On track,things were also challenging. McLaughlin joined Team Penske as a rising star in 2017,taking the Australian Supercars world by storm with 48 wins,59 pole positions and three series championships over the next four seasons. One of them was Australia’s biggest prize – the Peter Brock Trophy that comes with winning the Bathurst 1000.
Scott McLaughlin takes the checkered flag to win the 2019 Bathurst 1000.Getty
But moving to the US required him to learn an entirely new vehicle class,which is harder than it looks.
V8 Supercars are heavier and tend to max out at 300 kilometres an hour. By comparison,IndyCars are lightweight open-wheelers with a V6 engine. They can also hit about 380 kilometres an hour – making the Indy 500 a thrill ride for viewers but also one of the most dangerous endeavours in the sporting world.
Suddenly,one of the Australia’s most gifted drivers had to come to grips with a turbo-charged vehicle as he worked out how defend and attack on the racecourse.
He struggled to qualify for street course races,which made up about three quarters of the IndyCar calendar.
“It does mess with your head a bit”:Scott McLaughlin struggled to qualify at times in 2021.AP
“2021 was pretty up and down,” McLaughlin admits. “There’s definitely a point where it’s very easy as a professional sportsman or woman to lose the confidence that you have in yourself and your ability when things aren’t going well.
“You start to wonder:can you still do this? Are you as good as these people overseas? So it does mess with your head a bit.
“That’s why when I crossed the line at St Petersburg,there was a huge amount of relief. I guess that’s just why I work so hard. The countless sleepless nights,waking up early for the gym,looking at video and data – it all pays off. I’m bit a bit of a crazy person when it comes to my commitment to my job.”
While moving to America was a big change for McLaughlin,his team came up with a simple way of using it to build his brand and engage with his US fans:a hashtag called #ScottLearnsAmerica.
The social media campaign sparked a frenzy of suggestions over places to eat,and things to see and do while he was in America. He even had a,which included golf at Pebble Beach,Yosemite National Park and “spend life savings at Bed Bath and Beyond”.
McLaughlin was six when his father Wayne took him to a go-kart circuit in New Zealand. He loved it instantly,showing so much promise that Wayne decided to move the family to Australia,partly for a trucking business he owned,but also to further their son’s career.
But until their reunion this week,the tight-knight family hadn’t seen each other for 31 months – so long that Wayne told AP this week he was surprised to see how much weight his son had lost (a necessity in the aerodynamic world of Indy racing).
“He was always a pretty fat guy,he’s already been reasonably solid,and I just got a big shock to see him,” he said.
It was on a previous trip to America in 2016 that McLaughlin met his wife in a chance meeting in Las Vegas.
He’d volunteered to be a mechanic for a friend taking part in a go-kart tournament there.
The boys decided to have a night on the town and his friend invited a woman he knew to join them. That woman,in turn,brought her friend,Karly,a teacher who’d grown up in New York. It was love at first sight.
“We were essentially third wheeling,but it turned out to be the most important trip of my life,” McLaughlin says.
“I told her I was a mechanic and a few days later she followed me on social media. At the time I had about 40,000 people on Instagram,and she was like:you must be a pretty good mechanic.
“It was only afterwards she realised I was a racing car driver,but that’s why I think we got along so well – she took me for who I was besides not knowing me from a bar of soap”.
By that stage,McLaughlin was,in fact,a pretty big deal.
At the age of 19,he’d become the youngest ever driver to claim a V8 Supercars Championship victory after winning the opening race of the ITM 400 Auckland.
He made his debut in the Supercars Championship at the Sandown 500 in 2012 and also drove at the Sydney 500 that year for Garry Rogers Motorsport after Alexandre Premate was forced out of the race due to extreme heat exhaustion.
From there,the achievements kept coming:signing up with DJR Team Penske in 2017;taking out his maiden Supercars Championship Title in 2018;winning Bathurst 1000 in 2019.
Bathurst,however,proved to be a bitter-sweet win. by slowing McLaughlin’s teammate,Fabian Coulthard,as the cars made their way into the pits – a move critics say was designed to delay the rest of the pack.
McLaughlin was able to keep his title,but his team was fined $250,000 and deducted 300 championship points for an FIA International Sporting Code breach.
It’s a controversy that McLaughlin won’t dwell on now,although he did vent a little talking to AAP this week.
“I come from a series (Supercars) that was full of backstabbing,” McLaughlin said. “I just love how pure (IndyCar) is. You can have a blow-up on the racetrack,but I feel like you can all have a beer together after.”
Now he’s focused on Sunday’s big race with Team Penske,alongside teammates Will Power and Josef Newgarden.
“Indy 500 is definitely the next thing I want to tick off,” McLaughlin says. “I look at it like Bathurst,because of how hard it is to win that one race. You only get one chance in 365 days,so for me,it’s huge.
”But really,what I want is to solidify myself here in America and hopefully be able to out see my career here. You know,I’m 28 and the guys around me now that I’m racing are in their mid-40s. So,I feel if I can keep winning and keep being in the fight,there’s no reason why I couldn’t be here for a long time.“
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