McLaughlin beats teammate Power to win first IndyCar pole

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Scott McLaughlin circled qualifying as the area he had to improve upon in his second season of IndyCar. He nailed it in his first session of the year.

McLaughlin beat Team Penske teammate Will Power, one of the best qualifiers in series history, to win the pole Saturday for the season-opening race through the downtown streets of St. Petersburg.

Now that he’s got the qualifying part down, McLaughlin will have to figure out how to lead an IndyCar field to green Sunday for the first time in his career.

“I think it’s 12 years since I led a rolling start-away because of go-karting. It’s a standing start in Supercars. Hopefully I’m not an idiot,” McLaughlin said. “I’ll be starting from the front leading a group to the first corner. I’m used to braking with people in front of me, so I’ll have to make sure I don’t overshoot it like an idiot.”

The pole is the first for McLaughlin, who moved from racing supercars in Australia to IndyCar last season, but never got the results he expected. His issues were tied to his qualifying performance and McLaughlin only cracked the top-10 twice. His best starting position was fifth on the road course at Indianapolis.

“It’s something that you know you can do. Obviously in Australia we had a lot of success with poles and wins and all that sort of stuff and you know you can do it, but you have a hard year like ’21 where it just didn’t click and there was a few things where you just didn’t put it together, but you know the speed is there,” McLaughlin said. “It’s all about taking pressure off yourself and just focusing on what you need to do, and that’s what we did.”

McLaughlin gave an exuberant fist pump from inside his cockpit when he advanced into the Fast Six round