McLaughlin “really proud” of engineer Raul Prados after Laguna Seca pole
- Archie O’Reilly
- 1 hour ago
- 5 min read
Scott McLaughlin has hailed the relationship with his race engineer Raul Prados after taking pole position for the IndyCar season finale at Laguna Seca on Saturday.
Prados stepped into the lead engineering role on the No.3 stand in place of the promoted Ben Bretzman, with whom McLaughlin had worked for four seasons, for the 2026 campaign. This was part of a significant shake-up to McLaughlin’s core team, which also included former team president Tim Cindric’s addition as strategist.
It took some time for the new-look squad to gel at the beginning of the season - and for Prados to get reaccustomed to IndyCar competition. He had not worked in the series in a complete capacity since his time with AJ Foyt Racing from 2012 to 2015, after which he joined Penske and promptly transitioned to their sportscar programme.
But as the year comes to a close, Prados has successfully settled and McLaughlin is ending an initially tricky season in a richer vein of form. Beating champion Álex Palou to the final pole position of the year at the Spaniard’s favourite track is no doubt particularly satisfying.
“Really proud of Raul,” McLaughlin said. “We’ve been clicking. It feels really good right now. Really proud of him and the team. This is his pole. He’s a great friend of mine. Had an up-and-down season - just like I have the last few. Really cool to see him happy and jovial.
“He’s just a lot more comfortable with the tyre, with the car, how the tracks change, temperature adjustment. [It’s] so finicky in IndyCar, you can miss it just by a bee’s thing. If you just miss it, you’re off, you’re out. There’s been a couple times where we’ve had pretty good pace and we’ve missed the Fast 12. It doesn’t show our pace.
“I’m so happy to have qualified well for him and prove that the trajectory, where we’ve been going with the car, is great. This is his pole more than anything.”
McLaughlin’s relationship with Bretzman, which commenced in his sophomore season in 2021, was ideal evidence of how close-knit the driver-engineer bond often is. But a similar working chemistry has continued to blossom with Prados throughout this year.
“We’re very good friends,” McLaughlin said. “My wife calls him my second wife. We text all the time. We’re always talking and thinking about the car. We were talking about the 500 today. It’s great to have a guy like that. Ben was like that for me but he was very engineering, where Raul is probably a little bit more driver - helps me a little bit with driving.
“[He says]: ‘Why can’t you do that? What do I need to do with the car to make you do that?’ He calls me out if I’m slow. That’s a good thing. Not that Ben didn’t do it, but just a little bit different way we do it. I’ve learned a lot about the race car this year, what different parts do.”
McLaughlin’s pole for the Grand Prix of Monterey, which was earned by a mere 0.0177s ahead of Palou, marks his third P1 Award of the season and the 14th of his IndyCar career. But it is his first pole on a road course since Barber Motorsports Park in 2024.
“Road courses were almost our hurdle, bogey [track type],” McLaughlin said. “We felt good on short ovals, felt good at Indy. On street tracks, I feel like I’ve had really good speed there from the jump; I haven’t really worried about that car. The road-course car is something we’ve really struggled with - and this tyre. Personally, but I think as a team as well.
“I felt like from the jump this weekend, we’ve come with a philosophy we’ve been working on the last four months or something like that - basically since our Mid-Ohio test. Been feeling better and better [and] put it all together today.
“Felt like a lot of hard work. I feel like we’re really starting to just find a bit of direction. We’ve got a long way to go to be consistent week in, week out as well [but] we’re working hard. To get a pole is a really good motivating thing for the whole team.”
McLaughlin sits sixth in the standings - in a Penske sandwich - heading into the final race of the season, out of touch of David Malukas ahead but with a 20-point lead over Josef Newgarden. He is guaranteed to beat his 10th-place championship finish from 2025.
But compared to the heights of a fourth-place result and successive third-place finishes in points from 2022 to 2024, it has still been a mixed year. He finished inside the top 10 only four times in the first eight rounds - including second place from pole in St. Petersburg and third in the Indianapolis 500 - but has since recorded seven top 10s in nine races.
He has gone some way to re-establishing himself as a more frequent front-runner in recent weekends, crashing while attempting to take the race lead from Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood in Washington D.C and earning a pole and runner-up finish in Milwaukee.
“I’m too inconsistent,” McLaughlin said. “I need to be more consistent throughout the whole season if I’m going to compete. I have the speed. I don’t doubt that, by any means. I know I can win races - I’ve done it before. If I want to win a championship, which is the ultimate goal, I need to be better in the mid-season and consistent throughout the whole season.
“You’re chasing Álex [Palou and] what they do. Their excellence is high. They don’t miss a beat. He’s qualified on the front row again; he’s going to be a contender tomorrow. He does that week in, week out. We need to get to that level. It’s nice to win a race here or there, but I want to be competing week in, week out. That’s the only way to win a championship.”
McLaughlin has now gone more than two years without a victory, dating back to 1st September 2024 in Milwaukee. Starting from the ideal position, Sunday’s race from pole position at Laguna Seca serves as the final opportunity to prevent a two-season drought.
“It would mean a lot,” McLaughlin said of the prospect of winning the season finale. “Obviously I want that more than anything. You’ve seen the last events how hard I want it, how aggressive I want to be. [But] it’s not about forcing anything; I’m just dotting our Is, crossing our Ts. I think we’re on a great trajectory right now.
“Absolutely, I want to win the race. I want to win races in the future. I know we can. We have the speed. It’s all about getting that consistency back, which I think we’re slow getting back.
“Not a mic drop [but winning] would be a really good motivating feature. This is great, the pole. We’ve been really executing well in our races. To have track position tomorrow is a great start. We’ll see what we’ve got.”
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