Scott McLaughlin scored his second top five finish of the 2023 IndyCar Series with a fifth place finish in the Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
The three-time Supercars champion started eighth in the #3 Team Penske Chevrolet and remained in the lower half of the top 10 for much of the 80-lap race around the 13-turn, 2.258-mile natural terrain road course.
McLaughlin was running eighth heading to the final pit stop sequence but capitalised on Graham Rahal and Colton Herta’s pit road misfortune to move into fifth place after Pato O’Ward made his third scheduled pit stop on Lap 64.
Try as he might, McLaughlin could not find a way around Christian Lundgaard for fourth place near the end of the race, finishing 1.4452 seconds behind the Danish racer.
Team-mate Will Power was just 2.1695s ahead of McLaughlin in third place, further compounding McLaughlin’s frustrations after being held up by Benjamin Pedersen in the late stages of the race.
“He [Pedersen] wheeled us back like three seconds and then after that I was just playing catch-up,” McLaughlin said.
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“I didn’t want to go too hard on my tyres trying to catch up and then there was a yellow and I was screwed. So eventually we had really good pace and it was just how it was.
“Just got held up there on an exchange. But yeah, potential was probably a podium, but fifth is still a great result.”
Pedersen was a lap down late in the race and held up several drivers, prompting McLaughlin to pay a visit to the rookie after the race on pit road. Had McLaughlin not been held up, there was a much greater chance of a podium result.
“I would’ve been probably three seconds closer than I was with 20 to go,” McLaughlin said. “With 15 to go, I was like four-and-a-half, five seconds back, so yeah.”
Alex Palou won the race, leading 48 of the race’s 80 laps. Six-time Mid-Ohio winner Scott Dixon was second ahead of Power. McLaughlin is currently sixth in points, 148 points behind Palou.
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