Scott McLaughlin ended the longest winless run of his IndyCar career on Monday morning New Zealand time, controlling the Mission Foods Grand Prix of Monterey from pole position and taking the chequered flag 1.3739 seconds clear of Kyle Kirkwood at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in California.
It was the season finale, and it delivered New Zealand motorsport a rare double. While McLaughlin was winning at the front in the No. 3 Team Penske Chevrolet, six-time series champion Scott Dixon was completing his 417th and final race as a Chip Ganassi Racing driver, ending a partnership that has lasted 25 years.
McLaughlin’s win was his eighth in IndyCar and his first since the Milwaukee round in September 2024, a drought stretching across more than two seasons. He has spent most of 2026 chasing a car that would not quite come to him, and the Laguna Seca weekend was the first time all year the pieces lined up from qualifying through to the flag.
“My little girl hasn’t seen me win yet, and now she has. So, Dad’s coming home with a trophy, baby,” McLaughlin said in the official IndyCar race report. His daughter Lucy was born in October 2024, a month after his last visit to victory lane.
He also had words for the team that stuck with him through the lean run. “These guys and girls at Team Penske have stood behind me the whole time,” he said, before turning to the season ahead. “We had to be solid. That’s what it’s going to take to win a championship. What a great warmup we had. Bring on 2027.”
The championship itself was already settled. Alex Palou wrapped up his fifth title the weekend before Laguna Seca and finished the year on 631 points, 86 clear of Kirkwood on 545, according to the final 2026 standings. Christian Lundgaard took third on 535, Pato O’Ward fourth on 522 and David Malukas fifth on 514. McLaughlin’s late surge lifted him to sixth on 482.
Kirkwood was content with a clean run to second. “Second in the championship, and that’s my best road-course finish. We just played it super clean, super methodical,” he said. Alexander Rossi completed the podium in third, his first since joining Ed Carpenter Racing. “There was a lot of doubt coming into this event whether we could find a direction, so I think this is just a huge reward for all the effort,” Rossi said.
Dixon’s afternoon was far quieter. The 46-year-old crossed the line 17th and finished the championship 12th on 331 points. It was the first season since 2004 that he has gone a full year without a race win, an extraordinary statistic for a driver who has won in 21 consecutive seasons and who sits second on the all-time IndyCar win list with 59 victories.
Fifty-eight of those wins came in Ganassi machinery. Across 25 years the pair took six championships together, in 2003, 2008, 2013, 2015, 2018 and 2020, plus the 2008 Indianapolis 500, and Dixon strung together 373 consecutive series starts along the way. No driver has been tied to one IndyCar team for anything like as long.
Speaking at Laguna Seca before the race, Dixon told IndyCar that the people mattered more than the trophies. “Twenty-five years. It’s been fantastic, and it’s been a lot of fun with all those people,” he said. Andretti Global driver Will Power, one of Dixon’s longest-serving rivals, put the run in context. “It just shows you the level of talent, absolute professionalism,” Power said.
Dixon does not stop racing. He moves to Arrow McLaren for 2027 on a multi-year deal alongside O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist, an arrangement confirmed by McLaren in July. Ryan Hunter-Reay will drive a fourth entry at the Indianapolis 500. “Joining Arrow McLaren in 2027 is an exciting next step in my career,” Dixon said at the time. “As a New Zealander, being part of Bruce McLaren’s legacy will be special.”
The third New Zealander in the field, Marcus Armstrong, had one of his better days of the year with seventh place in the Meyer Shank Racing Honda. The 25-year-old ended the championship 14th on 320 points. He has already signed an extension with Meyer Shank and will move into the team’s No. 60 car for 2027, the seat Rosenqvist vacates when he joins Dixon at Arrow McLaren.
The race itself was unusually tidy. A single caution came on the opening lap when Sting Ray Robb ran into the back of Dennis Hauger, ending Hauger’s afternoon. After the restart the field ran clean, with only two drivers finishing off the lead lap, and McLaughlin was never seriously threatened.
For McLaughlin the win matters beyond the trophy. He arrived in IndyCar as a three-time Supercars champion and has had to rebuild a reputation in a category where results are much harder to come by, and a season that looked like a write-off until late August now closes with a dominant drive and a top-six championship finish. For Dixon, the ending was less about the result than the fact of it, a quiet 17th to close the most durable driver-team pairing the series has known.
Both will be back when the 2027 season opens at St Petersburg on 1 March, Dixon in papaya, McLaughlin still in Penske colours and Armstrong in a new number. Full race coverage is available from RNZ.
What did you make of the season, and can McLaughlin turn this into a title tilt in 2027? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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