Scott McLaughlin signs multiyear extension with Penske entering IndyCar season finale

MONTEREY, California — IndyCar newcomer Scott McLaughlin is here to stay with a multiyear contract extension from Team Penske just as the New Zealander heads into his first championship race since joining the series.

The extension announced Wednesday is the third in a month given out by Roger Penske, who also recently extended the contracts of NASCAR drivers Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano.

McLaughlin, who was last year’s IndyCar rookie of the year in a class that included Romain Grosjean and Jimmie Johnson, heads into Sunday’s season finale mathematically in the title hunt. His win last week at Portland was his third of the season and moved him to fifth in the standings, 41 points behind teammate and IndyCar leader Will Power.

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McLaughlin moved to IndyCar after winning three consecutive titles driving for Penske in Australian V8 Supercars. The 29-year-old assumed Penske was moving him to NASCAR but instead he was slotted for IndyCar.

“Really for him it was a bit of a risk to say, `Hey, let’s jump over and do IndyCar.’ I think he probably had more confidence in doing something with the roof over his head,” Penske team president Tim Cindric said. “But he was certainly attracted to racing in America and really hadn’t considered too much about IndyCar until we talked to him about how he thought that transition might go.

“I felt like after spending so much time with him in Australia that he had the ingredients really to drive any kind of race car and be successful,” Cindric added. “I think everybody has really seen what we saw in him when he won the three Supercar