CHEVROLET RACING IN NTT INDYCAR SERIES

BIG MACHINE MUSIC CITY GRAND PRIX

STREETS OF NASHVILLE

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE 

TEAM CHEVY POST RACE TRANSCRIPT

AUGUST 7, 2022

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN, NO. 3 DEX IMAGING TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET

POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT

THE MODERATOR: Joined by the driver of the DEX Imaging team, Penske Chevrolet, Scott McLaughlin, who came home second for his fifth podium of the season. Sixth of his career, 22 laps. We checked. You’re now 58 points out of the championship. I know you were looking earlier. About ten laps to go, I think you were sitting fifth. You just methodically made your way up through the restarts and whatnot. How big was your day today?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: It was up and down, Dave. We obviously led. We had a fast car. I felt like we were just sort of controlling the race there at the start. I hadn’t even touched my push-to-pass or anything like that. The feel same feel, things were good.

As we all know, INDYCAR, anything can happen. Alex pitted, and then we had the yellow. He jumped out in front. I was chasing him down. We had a good battle at the front, pulling away from everyone in that second stint.

But early on in the race I knew I had a car that could pass. I was passing a lot of cars. Especially on restarts. I felt really strong on the brakes, which was a really good thing around here to be confident with and pass people.

Then we had a bad pit stop, unfortunately. We had a blip on the radar there. Very proud of the boys all day. They were fantastic. We had one costly pit stop that put me back to 16th, and then —

 Yeah, man. You should have seen this restart.

THE MODERATOR: What were you going into it? What position were you?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I was right behind Alex. We probably would have popped out wherever he popped out. Our cars were pretty close.

We popped out 16th, and, yeah, I was just pissed off, so I just dropped the hammer. I felt like the seas parted, man, on the restart, and I passed all these cars. Jeez, I was quickly in 8th, and then there was another restart, and I passed two more, and another restart, passed a couple of more. Crap, we could have a go here. Passed one guy on the last one, and I’m, like, come on, Scotty, let’s go.

Honestly, Dave, that was probably, even though it didn’t work out in my favor, one of the most fun races of my career in one of the best race cars I’ve ever had. The car was so good. I had so much fun.

Yeah, the cautions and stuff were a bit inconsistent for all the driving in terms of we were just, like — you get into a rhythm, and then you stop, and then you have to restart again, but to battle one-on-one with Scotty right where, Texas last year, I didn’t really battle with him, I just wanted to bring him home in second.

Today I had a full go with him, and it was awesome. That was probably one of the top three best things of my career to date, that race.

THE MODERATOR: Even that said, the final restart, you, obviously, are trying to do whatever you can to get around. Are you going to have a second guess or think about what you did?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: A little bit. I was thinking a little bit of points as well. This is going to be a good points day with Ericsson out. And we’re always back there, Justin is behind me, Alex as well. We were ahead of him. Pato as well.

At the end of the day, we just had a really good race today, and we did. The opportunity was there a couple of times, and then just it probably would have ended up with us both in the fence if I took it. We just missed out.

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I didn’t feel too much of a difference, no.

Q. When you think of the series, I believe one of our conversations you talked about the first time you saw Scott Dixon for real you were, like, wow, you were star-struck by him. He was your hero growing up.

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Yeah, absolutely.

Q. Now here is this guy. He breaks Mario’s place for second-place most wins, but he has to beat you to do it. Elaborate a little bit more when you said that’s one of the best races of your career because of all the things that it involved?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Yeah, look, like I said, I just had a lot of fun, Bruce. I think it was just such an awesome battle. Strategy or not, I’ve had that this year as well. That’s what happens. You find yourself in the right spot at the right time. You have the track position, but we had to work for our track position to come back, and that’s why I had a lot of fun. Then to go toe to toe with Scotty, it was awesome.

Yeah, there’s definitely that star struck is gone. We’re probably more mates now, which is cool, and to call your hero mate is pretty cool. He is just a phenomenal guy. He is the greatest guy of all time, in my opinion. I think he doesn’t get enough respect for what he has achieved. I think he is a phenomenal race car driver. Phenomenal bloke. To go toe to toe with him is a very cool thing for me in my racing career and it’s like a bucket list thing.

Q. (Indiscernible) the crew guys were worried that with you restarting on the bridge with more push, the passes, that they may have been ripe for the picking. What was it necessarily that didn’t go right on the restart that kept you from maybe making the race —

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I probably played it slightly safe. After you look back on it now, I think I was a little nervous with a tense around the tires. I think me and Scotty both knew he crashed on the restart coming to the green, like under yellow. Just being in the wrong gears and whatever.

Yeah, just I had to be smart there. I knew it was going to be a good points day. I had gained back what we had lost, so I knew it was going to be strong for us.

And, yeah, also don’t want to crash a guy. I’ll do what I need to do to win a championship, to win a race or whatever, but at the same time you’ve got to play fair. And I think Scotty is one of the best in terms of playing hard and fair, and I expect that for me and if somebody gives me that feedback, I’ll give it back to them.

We had a good battle at Iowa. It was hard and fair, and today as well. What goes around comes around, and we always have pretty respectful, hard battles.

Q. I don’t know if you have been told it yet (indiscernible) coming in, today’s finish with the fourth closest on a street course between you and Dixon.

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I wish it was the other way around.

(Laughing)

Q. That leads into the second part of my question. I think the finish between you and Josef was even closer at Texas —

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Fantastic. I’m good at finishing second? Is that what you are trying to say?

Q. You are 58 points back. You won twice this year. You are within two-tenths of winning four times this year. Do you feel like you are maybe on the brink of being able to have been a championship winner? If those things go the other way, I don’t know how it plays out, you are either in the lead or incredibly —

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Yeah, and then you take into — if I just stayed off the lab pedal at turn three and at Indy 500 and didn’t crash there, it’s points. Then Long Beach I hit the inside wall at Gumby, spun there, points.

There are so many. Indy GP we were leading, chose the wrong tire. Points. Like I’ve said to you and many people all year, we’ve had pace this year, and that’s all I ever wanted. Last year was tough. I’ve always said it. It’s tough mentally. To bounce back like we have this year, it’s a proud moment. I still fully believe I can win a championship. I feel like I’m going to three tracks I really enjoy,

Gateway, Portland, Laguna.

Yeah, we might be an outsider, but I think I’ll be an outsider as long as I can be, and maybe we can switch that closeness in second the other way.

I’m very proud of just the efforts. Me and Benny have worked really good together all year. Kyle Moyer, my strategist, my team have been fantastic. I’m proud of the advancements we’ve made as a team, and I can’t thank my team enough for having their backs with me as well throughout that period when it was tough.

Q. The start-finish line had been a little farther down the straight there. Did you feel like you had enough there —

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I think if we had one more lap. I was alongside him, so I think I would have passed him, and I would have won the race, but that’s — if it was an 86-lap race, I would have won the race, but it was an 85, goddamn it. I’m going speak to the promoters. Why don’t we add a little more next year? But then I might be another foot.

That’s just motor racing. That’s why we love it. I think it’s a testament to INDYCAR. I was 16th with a fast race car. Sometimes in motorsport, if you have a fast race car, you can’t pass, i.e., the European series.

I genuinely was able to pass, smash under brakes, do this, do that, have the best run of my life, and it’s a testament to the race cars that we build and the packages that we have at INDYCAR. That’s what I have come here racing, the best race in the world.

Q. I imagine you probably have a similar (indiscernible) heading into the (indiscernible) we had nine cautions last year and eight cautions this year and half of the races under yellow. Is there anything we can do to turn this race into more of a green race while still keep the excitement factor, or this kind of going to be what this race is?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: It’s hard to say. At the start it was going smoothly, I’m like: This could be just a whole green race. But it wasn’t. I don’t know. I think you can’t stop us from going for passes and doing bits and pieces. Some people get it wrong, and unfortunately, because it’s so tight, it creates a bit of a cluster.

I’m looking forward to watching the replay because I saw some pretty big shunts, and see what happened today.

But I don’t think sometimes that’s not the track’s issue. I think sometimes that’s a driving issue as well. You know, it’s just — it’s — it takes two to tango. We’ve all been — I mean, I spun out twice last year and still finished a race. It’s just — it is what it is.

Q. You may have just answered this, but without the subpar pit stop at the end —

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I think it would have been a lot easier to pass a few cars. I think the pace that we had, if I had fresher tires and things — you know, yeah, maybe. It is what it is.

Like I said, my guys — I’m not shutting them down. They’ve been amazing all year, and we’ve had just one — this is our second hiccup, but it’s not — it’s not been — I just had a freak accident. We lost a nut, and it is what it is. That’s our best guy, Matt Johnson. Yeah, we’re good.

Q. Obviously, they make the change this year to the course, and everybody is predicting a smoother race, and I think they had as many cautions, airborne cars, wrecked cars and the like. Is it okay to have a race like this? Do you guys kind of like that it’s maybe this is the brand of Nashville, is that it’s wild every year? Is it still fun for you?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Potentially. It’s not fun when you lose out on yellows with a fast race car, but at the end of the day, that’s what — it’s just INDYCAR, and like I said, I don’t — it’s as much of a driving issue as it is a track issue.

I mean, like it’s not — we’re not just — I think — yeah. No, I don’t blame the track at all. I think the track is a great track. Yes, it’s tight. Yes, it’s — you’ve got to be assertive when you pass, but sometimes people just don’t give up, and that’s what happens.

But, look, I think the driving standards are great in the series. It’s just sometimes things happen. It’s racing. It’s good spectacle. Unfortunately, it’s probably one too many cautions that we have. I don’t know if you are going to fix that by lengthening or shortening it. I think all the changes they did this year were fantastic.

Q. You mentioned Benny. Maybe explain to some of the people who don’t know what that relationship is like with your engineer, Ben Bretzman. It’s been fun to watch you guys on social media interact and play golf together. Is it one of those ones where you are friends and co-workers?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Yeah, yeah. We’re definitely friends, which helps our relationship, I think because we’re just very honest with each other.

Benny is a great guy. He is a people’s person, and he was one of the first Team Penske engineering employees that I met when I came to INDYCAR to do my first simulating on the Chevy simulator.

That was a lot of fun, and we’ve just sort of grown our relationship since then. Played a lot of golf together over the last few years, and he was really my pick to be my engineer this year when I lost Jonathan.

I think he’s enjoyed working with me. I think he has had a long relationship with Simon, which was a very good one. They’re still great friends, but I think he has enjoyed just a little bit more of a fresh perspective with me, and vice versa.

We’re enjoying it, and we’ll keep working hard. He is a big team player. He is a big part of Thirsty Threes. He is the one that came up with the hashtag. He is a good lad.

Q. A wild card this weekend. Did you approach it that way? It’s your first championship battle towards the stretch here. Relief to get second. And how big did your eyes get when you found out the red flag was coming out?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Yeah, the red flag I thought might have worked a little bit more in our favor. I kind of wished there was maybe ten laps, and we had two or three laps on the caution. I felt I was in a bit of a rhythm. When you slow down, you could feel your legs cramping up a little bit and getting a little tight. Just trying to keep the blood flowing in them and stuff.

It was — yeah, just knowing that it was going to be a fight, but I also knew that, like I said, it’s a wild card. To get pole like we did, to end up in 16th, I thought, God, this has gone bad, and to come back to where we were. It was, like, sort of helped ourselves a little bit here. Just keep focused and hopefully it works out. It did.

Q. Scott, just a quick thing. First of all, congratulations. I know the other Scott is not there right now, but it’s the first-ever Kiwi 1, 2 in INDYCAR racing.

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Second. Remember Texas?

Q. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I finished second both times. (Laughing).

Q. I saw the club today of your mom and dad and your bus. Obviously get on Bus Bros in a round-about way on NBC. It’s been fabulous having them there. Last race for them. What a nail-biter to give them before they fly home. For you, really, it reminds me so much of seeing you at Adelaide. You just gel with this track completely. Was this something unique that did that for you? Is it just the way the whole team approached the event?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I said it from the start. If we can have a car that we can roll out of the truck that’s somewhere close, that was going to be awesome for us. And we were able to just tweak it throughout the weekend. From Saturday morning I think we touched the front wing. That’s all we did. We just massaged it and made it better. That’s a testament to Benny.

And then when you do that, you are able to work on yourself and work on your brake markers and work on finding things around the track that other people don’t know because you are just that comfortable with the race car.

I put a lot of the pace down today just due to the fact that I knew my race car, knew what I had, and it’s so important here on INDYCAR weekends. But, yeah, we didn’t win today, but the second was huge. Like I said before, it’s a bit of a wild card here these days, so to come out of here with second was great.

Q. It’s kind of keeping you in the championship chase as well. I guess that’s the thing that’s now coming into your mind. Perhaps a little bit more so than what it did before coming into this race.

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Yeah. It was always there. Ultimately, top five is a massive goal, and then to win it would be an absolute bonus, but certainly still believe that we’re as good a shot as anyone to win it.

I guess I’m the outsider. We can risk a little bit more and have a good time doing it. Yeah, I’m looking forward to throwing a few more sort of risky moves and trying to get myself in contention because I’m not unknown to winning championships. I know how to do it. It’s a matter of having a car to be able to do it.

If we roll up to each track in the next few weeks with the car that we had, we should be in pretty good shape.

Q. I want to ask you how hard it is to keep focus on the race with a lot of yellow flags. Because we had quite a crazy race. Sometimes with competitivity of the series, after those yellow flags, you could have bigger chances to pass your rivals. So how hard were those restarts to keep focus with a lot of pauses along the race?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Yeah, I felt like keeping focus was — for me I sort of knew what I needed do, but the restarts were important for me because that’s where I could make most of my moves.

I was really aggressive on the restarts to pass people and move our way forward. Once it all sort of strung out, it was quite hard to make our moves. Especially without a bit of risk.

We eventually made some with some risk, but at the end of the day, I felt pretty solid. Yeah, I felt really focused. Yeah, started to get really comfortable with the race car to be consistent on these race starts and understand what I’ve got even if it is a little bit loose.

Q. Did you feel today like a little bit scared on the track? Because we saw like two aggressive moves from some drivers today.

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Nope. (Laughing). I was fine, man. I just throw it in and hope we come out the other side.

Q. You’re fortunate to have a multitude of great sponsors, but what is it about the DEX (indiscernible)? Maybe you want that the next three races?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Look, I don’t know what it is, but they’re great people, and they’ve supported me since I’ve come to INDYCAR. I played golf with Dan Doyle. They’re a family — family-owned, DEX, it’s their family company. I played golf with him on Wednesday. I said, Hey, if I get pole Saturday, you got to come on Sunday. You got to fly up from Florida. He is, like, All right, deal.

Credit to him, he flew out this morning. I rang him on Saturday night. I said, Come on, let’s go. It’s your time to shine. And he did, and I was glad to put on a show for him and Dan Doyle III, his son.

They’re great people and great sponsors for the series. I think they’re going to be around for a long time.

Q. Are you superstitious at all? Kind of think about that a little bit?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: No, but it’s a good thing when you perform well. Just makes you feel good. And thankfully I’ve been able to perform well for many people this year, and it just so happens that DEX have had two great races.

Q. That Kiwi drag race sends Wayne back on a high note. Have you had a chance to see him yet?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I saw him a little bit. He is, like, yeah, great sendoff. It was cool. It was cool. I think they were ready to go home. It’s been a long journey for them all and long journey for me and my wife. Me and mom and dad, we’re pretty close, but not that close. No, no. (Laughing). I’m going to see them back at Christmas. I was so glad that they saw — I really wanted them to come to this race. The races that they came to, I said if you are going to come to the races and do — like, you want to do a chunk, this part of the race series when you have four in a row and there’s stuff going on, and it’s Indy 500, and the Indy race with the NASCAR series, these are the races you have to come to. I’m so glad they did it because they’ll probably never do it again.

But they’re definitely going to sporadically come to a few more races later next year, but it was awesome. We had a great time. Great time.

THE MODERATOR: How long was it? 12 weeks?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: 88 days.

THE MODERATOR: Who is counting?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: We worked it out so they get a 90-day visa, so they literally have to get out of the country or Biden is going to come knocking. It’s going to affect my U.S. citizenship one day. No. (Laughing).

Q. Follow up on that, I don’t know how this works. If you are legitimately in the championship hunt and get to Laguna, is there any way they can make it back?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: They did say they would probably come back for Laguna if I’m in the championship run, but, yeah, it all comes down to cash and a few things because it’s a big trip that they’ve done. Yeah, they bought a truck.

Q. (Off microphone)?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Have you heard that story? My dad bought a truck, and he sent it back to New Zealand, and he is going to convert it to right-hand drive because he loved it so much, and he wants to have a little bit of America in New Zealand.

I’m, like, you’re crazy. Yeah.

Q. How much does it cost to convert it?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I have no idea.

Q. It’s probably as much as the truck.

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Tell you what, I ain’t paying for it. I’m just so glad they had a great time. It was just awesome. Yeah, it was great.

THE MODERATOR: Has it already been shipped?

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: It’s gone. Yeah. I took it off our insurance yesterday. (Laughing). Took down the premium a little bit.

THE MODERATOR: Great job this weekend. Thanks so much, Scott McLaughlin.