Scott McLaughlin opens up about missing Barber pole to Alex Palou

Team Penske driver Scott McLaughlin secured second place during qualifying at the Children's of Alabama Indy Grand Prix at Barber Motorsports Park on May 3. He will start alongside the defending IndyCar series champion, Alex Palou. The Kiwi driver opened up about his feelings after the Spaniard took pole position.

The 31-year-old driver put in a lap of 1.07.4387 seconds and put his #3 Team Penske car powered by Chevrolet ahead of his teammates. Post the qualifying, while talking to Speedway Digest, Scott McLaughlin opened up about his feelings after missing out on claiming the pole position. He said,

"I just had my eye on the on the timing pylon, and then I saw the No. 10 (Alex Palou) come and I was like, oh, it's that guy again. But congrats to him. It was a great, great run and Im just really proud of my Good Ranchers Chevy team. We managed to bring a car that was okay, but we weren't great. Now it is back to sort of where I like it, and I'm excited for tomorrow's race. It's going to be nice and sunny, with a great starting spot and we'll see where we end up."

During the 2024 Barber Motorsports Park Grand Prix, McLaughlin won the pole position and ended up driving his #3 Chevrolet-powered Team Penske car to victory after putting up a dominating performance where he led 58 out of 90 laps. This also marked his second win at the track after securing his maiden win at the track in 2023.

Scott McLaughlin will be looking forward to converting the second-place start into a victory and making it a three-peat on May 4.

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Scott McLaughlin describes his perfect lap at the Barber Motorsports Park

The three-time supercar champion recently described his perfect lap at the Barber Motorsports Park with one word. He spoke about the same in a short video posted by Team Penske on their X account.

The short clip showed McLaughlin suiting up and answering questions about his choices when it comes to food and music. The clip was captioned:

"Suit up with @smclaughlin93."

Among other questions, the Kiwi driver was asked to describe his perfect lap around the Barber Motorsports Park in one word. He replied with,

"Flow" (1:42)

He went on to explain what he meant by flow by saying,

"You got to keep the flow up. You go to keep the speed up and thankfully I've had a good car that I was able to do that."

The Team Penske driver's 2025 season is off to a decent start as he qualified for the St. Petersburg Grand Prix held on March 2 in pole position and finished the race in fourth place. During the recently held ACURA Grand Prix of Long Beach (April 13), Scott McLaughlin qualified in 6th place and finished the race in 6th place as well.