McLaughlin ‘had a car for pole’ before St Petersburg spin

Scott McLaughlin thinks he had a car capable of pole position at the St Petersburg IndyCar event before he spun out of the Fast Six.

The 2022 St Petersburg pole-sitter was the only Team Penske driver to make it through to the final phase of Qualifying, when he hit the wall exiting Turn 10.

McLaughlin had done likewise a day earlier in Practice 1 but, unlike then, he was unable to catch the #3 Chevrolet when he arrived at the Turn 11/Turn 12 dogleg.

Instead, the New Zealander broke into a spin and while he escaped further damage before coming to rest at the edge of Turn 13, he stalled and triggered a red flag.

As such, McLaughlin was not allowed to continue, although it is likely that he had presumably damaged a toe link anyway.

“Overall, not a bad day for us in the Dex Imaging Chevy,” he said.

“We beat our team-mates in qualifying, which is your first job, and then we ended up P6 after our spin.

“I felt like we had a car for pole today, which was really disappointing that I made a mistake.

“I hit the wall at Turn 10 on my first out lap and bent it and spun, so unfortunately, it caused a red, took us out of qualifying, but we’ll be okay for tomorrow and we can definitely work from there.”

No back-to-back pole position for @smclaughlin93 on the streets of St. Pete after this incident in the #FirestoneFast6. #INDYCAR // #FirestoneGP pic.twitter.com/Fl307c7TkH

— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) March 4, 2023

The McLaughlin incident caused the second red flag of the Fast Six but, with neither he nor Kyle Kirkwood officially registering a time for that segment, they reverted to their Round 2 efforts.

As such, Kirkwood gets fifth on the grid, with the #3 Penske entry alongside.

Will Power is set to start 10th in the #12 Penske Chevrolet after getting caught out by the windy conditions, while team-mate Josef Newgarden could only manage 14th on the grid having failed to advance from Round 1.

Romain Grosjean claimed pole by a margin of 0.4155s with his Andretti Autosport team-mate Colton Herta also making it onto the front row.

Tomorrow, the Warmup takes place at 09:00 ET/ 01:00 AEDT, followed by the 100-lap Race at 12:20 ET/04:20 AEDT.

Both sessions are live and ad-free on Stan Sport, with coverage of the race beginning at 04:00 AEDT.