Despite being beaten by Álex Palou, Scott McLaughlin still had a good start to the season.

The New Zealander once again started from pole position on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, but by the end of the first stint he had to accept the situation, as Álex Palou had taken the lead thanks to a superior strategy. The Spanish driver had started on soft tires, and with less degradation than anticipated, he was able to gain the advantage by staying out two laps longer than Scott McLaughlin, who had started on hard tires.

“Obviously, I think the right decision today was probably to start with soft tires, but we didn’t know that at the start. It was more of a hunch and our intention, and we decided to go with the hard tires. We didn’t have the pace, but he did.”

Emerging from the pits in third place, McLaughlin struggled at the end of his second stint, as Marcus Ericsson (Andretti Global) had immense difficulty maintaining grip on his soft tires. The gap, which had stabilized between Palou and Ericsson at around one second, widened to 14 seconds by the time McLaughlin finally managed to reclaim second place. He would then lose that position again to another Andretti, this time driven by Kyle Kirkwood.

“Like I said, I think I got stuck behind Marcus for a while, I lost time, and when I got out, Kyle just passed me in the pits. Yes, he won by 12 seconds or something like that, but I think I could have closed that gap with the handling of my car.”

After a rather difficult 2025 season, McLaughlin bounced back right from the first race of the 2026 season, which it contested with a new strategist, Tim Cindric. Cindric had been the team's president for over 20 years. IndyCar Team Penske arrives in a new role for the New Zealander, and things seem to be going well for now.

“First of all, Tim allowed me to see racing from a completely different perspective. It’s not that my predecessors didn’t do that. I really enjoyed working with Kyle (Moyer), who is now alongside Christian (Lundgaard) at Arrow.” McLaren(Editor's note), and Ben (Bretzman) before him. But I think the confidence I have in Tim Cindric, because of what he's achieved in the past and his ability to make the right decisions at the right time, is enormous. It allows me to focus more on driving, and that's very important."

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