Scott McLaughlin, favorite for the 2025 IndyCar season?

Let's first go back to 2010. Scott McLaughlin was 17 years old, Alex Palou was only 13, so both drivers were far from being the current terrors of the racetracks.IndyCar. In the American championship, an Australian named Will Power, at Penske, was taking on Chip Ganassi Racing's reigning champion, Dario Franchitti. The Scot was already well established in the championship, having won it in 2007, eight years after finishing tied with Juan Pablo Montoya in the 1999 CART title race. Power was competing in his sixth season in North America, but this was the first time he had established himself as a genuine title contender. The battle between the two men raged until the final race of the season, when Franchitti finally won the title. It was the same in 2011, with the Scot getting the better of the Australian.

It is clearly not out of bounds to think that if Power was in the title fight against Palou's No. 10 Ganassi until the last race of this year, the scenario will once again be set, this time with McLaughlin in the role of Team Penske driver. The leader of the "Thirsty 3s", as he calls his team of mechanics and engineers, is one of three drivers to have won three times in 2024, the other two being Palou and Power. Above all, he is the one who finished highest in the championship among the three drivers of "Captain" Roger Penske's team, and this for the second consecutive year.

Meteoric rise

Like Palou, champion in his second season, McLaughlin has had a meteoric rise in IndyCar since his arrival in 2021. Although he had to wait until his third season to reach the top 3 of the championship, the New Zealander came from a completely different world, crowned with three consecutive titles in Supercars, the Australian touring car championship. "Scott Mac" won his crowns at DJR Team Penske, which allowed Roger Penske to detect the potential of this budding champion very early on, whom he decided to line up in IndyCar full-time following his third title.

While he has never been terribly hard on pace, the number 3 rider had to adapt to driving a car, very different from the cars he had known until now. Still finishing as the best rookie of the 2021 season, McLaughlin started 2022 with a pole position and his first victory the same weekend, at the opening in St. Petersburg. If consistency failed him in the following rounds, he is now a complete driver, and devilishly efficient in qualifying.

A five-time poleman this year, including the pole position at the Indianapolis 500, Scott McLaughlin won three victory bouquets on his way to his third place in the championship. Above all, he won twice on ovals, a type of circuit where he finished second in his first race in Texas in 2021, but where he had never won before. Following his success at Iowa Speedway, he declared "to finally be able to claim the role of IndyCar driver", given that he had won on road tracks, urban circuits and ovals. Palou, for example, has never yet won on these very special tracks…

A 2024 championship that could have already been closer

Above all, the 2024 title could have been played out much more closely without the disqualification suffered by McLaughlin and his teammate Josef Newgarden at the end of the first round of the season in St. Petersburg. The two Penske drivers had been excluded even though they had both finished on the podium, for having used their push-to-pass illegally. A major scandal, where the responsibility of the drivers was clearly demonstrated, but which from an accounting point of view resulted in a loss of 35 points for McLaughlin, third at 39 points behind Palou at the end of the season. If we add to that the retirement caused by his teammate Power in the last laps in Toronto, it is perhaps he who could have snatched the crown from Palou, and become the second Kiwi champion of the discipline, after Scott Dixon.

All these factors make McLaughlin one of the clear favorites for the 2025 championship. Among the fastest, he is now reaching maturity, managing to control races at the front as well as saving intermediate points on a day when his car is less competitive. Despite Colton Herta's second place in the championship this year, everything suggests that the 2025 season could be summed up as a Palou-McLaughlin duel, and this time, it may not be Chip Ganassi Racing that would emerge victorious...

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