From Oz to Indy with Scott McLaughlin

Look up and down the grid of the NTT IndyCar Series and you'll be hard-pressed to find a driver with a more raw and unfiltered personality than Scott McLaughlin. The 27-year-old New Zealand native still possesses the professionalism of his peers, but also presents himself as a guy just enjoying everything about life and not afraid to share that with the world.

Prior to his full-time move to North America’s premier open-wheel championship this year, McLaughlin touched anything he could with four wheels around his homeland in Australia. He spent the majority of the past decade racing in Supercars, finding enormous success as a three-time champion (2018-20). In 253 starts there, he amassed 56 victories (fourth all-time), 106 podiums and 76 poles.

But that was then. Now, he is less than 24 hours away from competing in his first-ever Indianapolis 500, where he will start 17th in the No. 3 Team Penske Chevrolet.

So, how does a guy who grew up in the Oceania region end up wanting to come to IndyCar and not follow the likes of Daniel Ricciardo or Mark Webber into Formula 1?

“I was always on the Supercars dream because that was really the most realistic thing for me at the time,” McLaughlin tells RACER. “When you're young, you go to Europe very early and you try and make that dream work. But to me, I was a bigger kid. I didn't quite fit that sort of open-wheeler regime and didn't want to go to Formula 1 like I did say, America. I've always been infatuated with American racing -- NASCAR, IndyCar, everything -- and the country itself.

Even while living his Supercars dream, McLaughlin had his eyes on American racing. Daniel Kalisz/Motorsport Images

“My family brought me up with the American hot rods and everything. I've sort of grown up idolizing America, but the first goal obviously was Supercars, with the dream of maybe one day go to America and race NASCAR or something. The IndyCar thing was always there because I was infatuated with Scott Dixon and what he was doing over here with Ganassi, especially in 2003 and after 2008, when he won the 500.

"When Roger (Penske) started showing interest about coming to Australia to race Supercars, I immediately emailed (team boss) Tim Cindric. I got his details from Marcos Ambrose, actually. This was 2014; I was 21. I just said, ‘I'm not sure if you're coming to Supercars or not, but if you are, here's my details. And if there's ever vice versa, an opportunity to come race a Nationwide (now Xfinity) race or something like that. I'd love to do it.' It was pretty chill. He said, 'Thanks for the details. Great to hear from you.' Nothing really came of it.”

Not at first, anyway. Penske partnered with Dick Johnson, founder of the most-tenured Supercars squad, to form DJR Team Penske in 2014. It took until 2017 for the team to grab McLaughlin.

“During those contract talks, I told them that I'd love to be in America, and they knew my aspirations of being in America,” says McLaughlin. “It was basically, 'Hey you win us a championship and a Bathurst. Then, once we've done our goals, we'll worry about everything else.' In 2019, fast tracking to that when we had won all that sort of stuff, TC [Cindric] was like, 'Hey, would you like to try an Indy car?'

“I was like, 'Yeah, I'll race a wheelbarrow with a Penske sticker on it. I don't give a s***. I want to go out and race whatever you guys want me to, but I'd love to just be in America.' I did the simulator, and felt good with that. Did the Sebring test, felt good. Did the COTA test -- which meant I knew I was going to race at some point, because I had to do a race to do the COTA test -- and then COVID hit and the rest is history.

“I think it was one of the best decisions I've made. I think when we spoke about IndyCar, it was very similar to the schedule I see in Australia -- it's not as unforgiving as the NASCAR schedule. You race on more street courses, race on more road courses with the devil of an oval, which is probably the biggest of them all. I was so excited for this race more than any.”

The “infatuation” with six-time IndyCar champion Dixon, who starts on pole for Sunday’s Indy 500, began in 2001 via racing magazines.

“I'd read everything up,” he recalls. “I remember when Scott won his first Champ Car race in 2001 Nazareth with PacWest and stuff. I knew about Scott going for Rookie of the Year in Champ Car or whatever it was at the time. I was like, 'Oh, this guy is pretty cool.' Then he obviously got the Ganassi role, and was just someone that I followed.

“I wasn't infatuated with Scott as much as I was Greg Murphy (four-time winner at Bathurst), who was my absolute hero growing up. But for someone showing what Kiwis can do on the world stage -- especially in America, where I always was infatuated with -- that's where it all happened, when he started winning the championships in IRL and then, 2008, the Indy 500. I remember meeting Scott when he came back home to New Zealand in 2008. After that race, he was doing a charity thing for Canteen, which is for kids with cancer, and he was just so nice. I was just a kid back then in go-karts. It's funny how it's all changed -- now 15-odd years later, I'm racing him.”

In his first oval race at TMS, McLaughlin found himself dueling his hero for the win. Jake Galstad/Motorsport Images

Despite having just six IndyCar starts under his belt, McLaughlin has already found himself battling Dixon. At Texas, in the opening act of the doubleheader earlier this month -- which marked McLaughlin’s first oval start -- he found himself trying to chase down his hero for the win before ultimately settling for second. He has since rattled off consecutive top-10s to sit eighth in the championship. It’s been a remarkable transition to open-wheel racing for a guy who, at one point, didn’t know where his career would go beyond Supercars.

“The reason I didn't do so many open-wheel races was because my mom and dad didn't really like open-wheelers; they're very nervous of them,” McLaughlin admits. “So, they're sort of eating their words a little bit now, but they've gotten over that fear a little bit. The aeroscreen has helped a lot, especially for my mother. But Supercars, I guess in some ways, that was always the ultimate for me and to win the Supercars championship and Bathurst. Definitely once I won Bathurst, it was a huge weight off my shoulders in terms of what I felt and what I could achieve.

“I've done everything I wanted to do. So, I could have easily stayed there for the rest of my days and certainly made a good wage and, and made a good career out of it. Is that what I wanted as a person? I don't think so. I think even without this association with Team Penske, I still would have looked elsewhere for potential opportunities in other categories around the world, just because I feel like once you've ticked a box, I don't really like the big fish in the small pond-type thing. I just want to get out and challenge myself and try different races, whether that was going to be Le Mans or WEC [World Endurance Championship] stuff, or coming across to America. America, for me, was always number one.”

Now that he's made it to America, though, McLaughlin says he can easily see IndyCar as a place to stay for the remainder of his career.

“It's such a nice environment,” he said. “The fans are nice. The tracks we race on are badass, you get to race in the Indy 500 every year. It's the biggest race in the world. There's nothing bigger than it. I think if I could, I'd love to stay here for the rest of my career. At the same time, who knows what the future holds, but yeah, certainly I've got goals in IndyCar racing that I would love to achieve, and once I tick those, we'll see what happens.

“One thing I've really noticed is the camaraderie between the drivers. It's ruthless -- it's one of the hardest racing series in how hard everyone races that I've ever raced in before. You race people and they're like, 'Does this guy hate me or something?' And then you come back in and they're like, chatting with you, 'How's the race, man?' or whatever. I feel like that's how racing should be. You should have rivalries and all that stuff, but you should be sporty enough to come in and have a beer at the end of it and go, ‘That was pretty f***ing cool.’ I think IndyCar has got a good mix of that. The NBC broadcasts have been fantastic. The fans, I think they're so appreciative of what we do as drivers, which is a cool feeling, too. You feel a bit more superhero in some ways, especially when you walk out here.”

Having the experience of four-time Indy winner Rick Mears (left) to lean on has helped McLaughlin's comfort level at IMS. Barry Cantrell/Motorsport Images

While McLaughlin comes into the daunting Indianapolis Motor Speedway as a rookie, he has four-time Indy 500 winner Rick Mears to lean on as a coach. His mentorship of “trust what you feel” has already paid itself off, enabling McLaughlin to get comfortably at speed around the 2.5-mile speedway. Add to that his recent experience at Texas, and the confidence for McLaughlin heading into Sunday is high.

“If I get to the position of where we were in Texas, we're not going to be a fish out of water,” he says. “I feel like I can hold my spot, if not move forward even further. I feel like we've shown that over the race runs and stuff over the week. If I was up the front, I could sort of stay there with some pretty good cars. And then down the back, it's a little bit harder with the (aero) wash and how hot it was, but I think yeah, with the cool temps and stuff, I think the racing is going to be fast and you'll be able to make some moves. We've worked pretty hard on our race package. I think we've got a pretty good strong car but having Rick there and be able to come in and he's one of the first people that I speak to, it's pretty cool.

“Little things like at the very start of the weekend, he told the engineers to take half a turn of wing out of the front, just because of the cloud cover and the way that the cars are going to be and how stuck that we're going to be that he didn't want me to lose confidence initially. It was the best thing we did because I went out and had a bit of push, but I was able to feel the car -- the car wasn't driving me. Having that sort of mentorship... he does it for all of them (Team Penske drivers) but obviously because I'm a rookie, he's sort of been by my hip the whole time, really enjoyed it. It's been a really cool thing. And you realize how much experience he has when you speak to him a lot.”

McLaughlin is determined to soak up all the elements that go into a month of May at Indy. Motorsport Images

While countless engagements fill up the majority of the month, McLaughlin has been able to take a few moments to ponder the significance of his situation, and plans to again the night before the race.

“One thing about staying at the track that's cool is you're able to do basically whatever you want at night,” he related. “There's not many people around. I actually go and just walk up into the grandstands and just like sit there and just take it all in. It's pretty cool.

"The night before qualifying I just went up there. I was a fair bit nervous and just put my AirPods in, told my wife, 'I'm going for a walk,' and went up to basically the top of the bricks in the grandstand, just hung out, watched the sun go down. It's pretty soppy, but this is just how it was, and it was nice to just go, 'I'm going to qualify for the biggest race of my life tomorrow,' which was a cool thing. I'll probably do it Saturday night before the race and just soak it all in and get excited for what's ahead.”