McLaughlin Ends Drought With Dominant Laguna Seca Win

Scott McLaughlin delivered a dominant Laguna Seca win to end a 36-race, two-year drought, leading 87 of 95 laps to take the season-closing Mission Foods Grand Prix of Monterey by 1.3739 seconds over Kyle Kirkwood. It was his eighth INDYCAR win and his first since September 2024. Alexander Rossi completed the podium in third for ECR, his first podium since finishing third at this same event for Arrow McLaren in June 2024, and the team’s best result since Christian Rasmussen’s win at Milwaukee in August 2025. Kirkwood’s runner-up finish locked in a career-best second in the championship standings behind Alex Palou, whose fifth title was already sealed the week before at Milwaukee. The champion gambled on a used-alternates strategy that never came good, and Palou closed out the season he had already won with a quiet eighth.

Key Points: Mission Foods Grand Prix of Monterey

• Scott McLaughlin ends a 36-race, two-year winless run with a dominant Laguna Seca victory, leading 87 of 95 laps for his eighth INDYCAR win
• Kyle Kirkwood finishes second, matching his best road course result of the year and locking in a career-best second in the championship, 86 points behind Palou
• Alexander Rossi takes third for ECR, his first personal podium since June 2024 and the team’s best road course result of the season
• Alex Palou, champion already sealed at Milwaukee the week before, gambles on used alternates twice and finishes eighth on a quiet closing day
• Sole caution of the race: Lap 1 contact between Sting Ray Robb and Dennis Hauger in Turn 6 ends Hauger’s race early, but he still claims Rookie of the Year
• Season closes with Team Penske’s 312th all-time win, the first Chevy victory at Laguna Seca since 1993, and 2027 opens at St. Petersburg on March 7

Closing Out 2026 at Laguna Seca

Eleven turns, 2.238 miles, the last round of a long season on a circuit that has rarely been kind to Team Penske. The Mission Foods Grand Prix of Monterey carried no championship weight this year. Palou had already wrapped that up the weekend before at Milwaukee. What it carried instead was a season’s worth of unfinished business for the No. 3 car, and McLaughlin settled it in the most complete way available to him.

The win arrived in Team Penske’s 60th anniversary season, the organisation’s 312th all-time INDYCAR victory. It was also the first time a Chevrolet-powered car had won at Laguna Seca since Paul Tracy in 1993, a stat McLaughlin admitted he didn’t know until it was put to him afterwards.

McLaughlin’s Domination

McLaughlin started from pole and led the opening lap. Nobody took it from him on track. The only moments he wasn’t out front came during the pit cycles, when Felix Rosenqvist, Alexander Rossi and Marcus Armstrong each took a brief spell at the head of the field as the stops played out. Six lead changes among four drivers across the afternoon, all of them pit-cycle artefacts.

Three clean stops, all matched lap for lap by Kirkwood behind him: Lap 20, Lap 44, Lap 70. After the opening-lap caution, nothing else arrived to disturb the rhythm. McLaughlin’s advantage was nearly four seconds at the halfway point. Rinus VeeKay set the outright fastest lap of the race on Lap 38, 112.440mph, but it did nothing to trouble the order at the front. McLaughlin’s own best lap came early, Lap 8, 112.332mph, the fastest lap by the race leader all afternoon.

He ran his final stint on the primary tyre, the more durable of Firestone’s two compounds at this track, and it held to the flag. He crossed the line 1.3739 seconds clear of Kirkwood, his eighth INDYCAR win and his first since the second race of the Milwaukee doubleheader back in September 2024. Thirty-six races between wins, six podiums in that stretch that never turned into the top step.

He was candid afterwards about how much the tyre wear surprised him through that closing stint, describing a vibration late on that was bad enough to change where he placed the car and how hard he pushed the kerbs, without it ever tipping into concern.

Team principal Jonathan Diuguid pointed to the wider picture for the No. 3 car and for Team Penske as a whole. Road courses had been the identified weak point through the season, and Laguna Seca marked the second time in recent rounds the team had shown real pace on this type of circuit.

Palou’s Quiet Finale

Palou’s championship had already been decided the previous weekend at Milwaukee. There was nothing left to fight for except a result, and he chose to chase one rather than cruise to it. Starting on used alternates, then running a second set of used alternates through the middle of the race, the strategy never worked. Four pit stops against three for the frontrunners. He finished eighth, still on the lead lap, 28 seconds off the win.

It closed a season that will be remembered for the fifth championship rather than the finale. Palou was gracious about the result that beat him on the day.

Kirkwood’s Late Push

Kirkwood had climbed from sixth on the grid to second by Lap 20, after Palou pitted early to switch strategy, and from there he simply shadowed the leader, matching every stop and waiting for an opening. It arrived in the final stint. Kirkwood ran his last set on the alternate tyre, faster in the opening laps than McLaughlin’s primary but the first to fall away, and closed to within 1.2 seconds on Lap 72. It was as close as the race ever got. McLaughlin eased the gap back out as Kirkwood’s alternates began to fade late in the stint.

With nothing left to gain in the championship battle beyond the position itself, Kirkwood chose not to force it.

Rest of the Field

Felix Rosenqvist finished fourth for Meyer Shank Racing, one of three drivers besides McLaughlin to take a spell at the front during the pit cycles. David Malukas rounded out the top five, the second Team Penske car in the top five and a clean run to close out the season for the team.

Dennis Hauger’s race lasted a matter of corners. Caught up in Sting Ray Robb’s Lap 1 contact in Turn 6, he was out before the field had settled into any rhythm at all, classified last of the 25 entries. It didn’t cost him the season. Hauger closes out 2026 with the Rookie of the Year title, 15 points clear of Mick Schumacher, the margin built over the previous 17 rounds enough to withstand a five-point weekend here. Robb was handed a 10-second stop-and-hold for avoidable contact, served it on Lap 5, and continued to finish 23rd.

Alexander Rossi’s third for ECR was his first podium since finishing third at this same event for Arrow McLaren back in June 2024, and the best day for ECR as a team since Christian Rasmussen’s win at Milwaukee in August 2025. Road courses have been the team’s weak point all season, by Rossi’s own admission afterwards.

Official Race Classification: Mission Foods Grand Prix of Monterey

Fastest lap: Rinus VeeKay, 112.440 mph (71.6544 sec), Lap 38. Fastest leader lap: Scott McLaughlin, 112.332 mph (71.7233 sec), Lap 8. Total laps: 95. Caution laps: 3 (Laps 1 to 3). Lead changes: 6 among 4 drivers. (R) Rookie. © INDYCAR 2026

Final 2026 Championship Standings

Palou closes out his fifth title with an 86-point margin over Kirkwood, whose runner-up finish here is a career best.

© INDYCAR 2026

Coffee Corner Take

Thirty-six races between wins. Six podiums in that stretch that never quite turned into the top step. McLaughlin led the first lap of the season back in March at St. Petersburg, on pole, before Palou’s overcut swept the win away from him. He led the last lap of it today. A car and a driver doing the job cleanly for 95 laps, at a track that has given his team nothing but grief for two years running.

The Lucy line will be the headline elsewhere and it should be. A driver who has been promising his daughter a win for as long as she has been old enough to understand what that means, delivering it in front of her on the last weekend of the year. Exactly what it sounds like.

Kirkwood’s afternoon deserves its own line. Nothing to gain by attacking, a career-best championship position to lose by getting it wrong. He read the situation correctly and executed it, watching the gap to McLaughlin all the way to the flag rather than throwing a set of tired alternates at a fight he didn’t need. Second in the championship, best road course finish of his career, and not one unnecessary risk taken to get there.

Palou’s afternoon barely registers against the season he actually had. Five championships. Four in a row. The gamble on used alternates cost him a handful of positions on a day whose outcome had already been settled a week earlier at Milwaukee. Ganassi will forget Laguna Seca 2026 by the time the champagne dries.

Rossi’s third carries more weight than the result alone suggests. Road courses have been ECR’s weak point all season, by Rossi’s own admission, and a team finding pace on the exact type of circuit that has exposed it most, in the final round, is worth carrying into the off-season. Whether that pace carries into 2027 is another question. For ECR, ending this season with a podium on what has been its weakest type of circuit still matters.

Hauger’s Rookie of the Year title survives a Lap 1 wipeout that ended his afternoon before it began. Seventeen rounds built the cushion. Today only had to not wreck it.

2026 is done. St. Petersburg opens 2027 on March 7. McLaughlin has five months to find out whether Laguna Seca was the spark that ends a drought for good, or a single afternoon Team Penske looks back on fondly during a long winter of work.